


The Empty Spaces Between The Stars

by mydogwatson



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hiatus, It's all so complicated, John is loyal, M/M, Mycroft has secrets, Pre-Slash, Reunion, Sherlock is lonely, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post RF reunion story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This Is The Hour Of Lead

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it won't happen this way, but I think it would be great if it did. So, in my head at least, it will.
> 
> A note of no importance at all: The first chapter of this story is actually the very first Sherlock story I ever wrote. It was a one-shot just for my own fun. Then it, like Topsy, "just growed".
> 
> It is not a WIP. The story is finished and I will be posting a chapter a day.

[](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1499660)

Chapter One: This Is The Hour of Lead

…Remembered, if outlived, as Freezing Persons  
recollect the snow---First---Chill---then Stupor---  
Then the letting go.

-Emily Dickenson

 

The absurdly long black limousine clearly did not belong on this road. The driver could barely maneuver in the narrow crowded passage intended for an entirely different era, moving slowly along, apparently looking for a particular address amongst the rundown estate buildings. What possible business could anyone in a car like that one even have in this most unprepossessing corner of London? Speculation was whispered along the pavement in the wake of the car’s tortured progress.

Several lazy wagers were offered up by idle on-lookers, setting odds on whether or not whoever was riding inside the extremely well-polished vehicle would really dare to park it here. But before any actual money was pulled out, assuming any of the chancers actually had the funds to back up their big words, the driver managed to find an empty spot that would just about accommodate the car and pulled in. After a moment, the rear passenger door opened.

The man who stepped out definitely did not belong on this road either. His expensive tailoring, the tightly coiled umbrella he sported in one hand and, most of all, his attitude, marked him out clearly as an alien invader.

Those who were close enough to the car could see that there were still two people inside. In the back was a stunningly beautiful young woman who was paying absolutely no attention at all to the inquisitive stares or even the appreciative whistles. Instead, she was entirely focused on the mobile in her hand, texting with admirable dexterity. Her admirers might have ventured nearer, might even have made more vocal comments, save for their view of the other occupant, the driver. It was clear from the set of his shoulders and the stoniness of his expression that chauffeuring was not his primary occupation. Perhaps he was a bodyguard. Or, if anyone had gotten close enough to see his eyes, they would have gone further. Mercenary might have been the guess in that case. His presence at least explained the otherwise foolish decision to park such a car in this place.

Umbrella Man was still standing on the kerb, apparently reluctant to actually be about whatever his business here was. Then, possibly out of anger, or perhaps an unaccustomed attack of nerves [unaccustomed, of course, because men who wore expensive suits and rode around in gleaming limousines with beautiful women and dangerous looking drivers rarely suffered attacks of nerves], he slammed the door closed and headed for the building.

Once inside the distinctly uninviting foyer, he quickly discovered that the lift was not operating. Given that the interior absolutely reeked of old piss and other even more unsavory smells, that was probably more a good thing than a bad.

Resigned [a not entirely unfamiliar state], he climbed the stairs to the third floor and stopped in front of flat 3A.

Had anyone still been watching, this destination would have been another surprise. No one ever visited the man in 3A. Admittedly, that had not always been the case. Six months ago, when he first moved in, several people had come calling. An older woman, mother perhaps, had come three times. Then came a man, who though not in uniform or driving an official car, was so obviously a member of the constabulary that his presence raised more than a few questions about the new neighbor. The shouting that ensued during that particular visit reached the pavement below and, sensibly, he never came back. One or two others showed up once or twice. A very drunk woman. A plump man in glasses who looked quite distressed as he left.

But none of the visitors had ever lingered for very long, and over the period of a few weeks, the visits dwindled off and then ceased altogether.

Now no one came to see the man in 3A.

But the newcomer with the umbrella raised it to tap on the door, twice, crisply.

There was no reply.

He tapped again, twice, now even more crisply if possible, and spoke. “John,” he said in a low voice that nevertheless carried perfectly. It was a voice clearly accustomed to being obeyed immediately, if not sooner. “Let me in.”

For several long moments it seemed that there would be no response, even to that authoritative request.

But then, slowly, the door opened.  
“I thought it was made clear that I never wanted to see you again,” John Watson said in a voice grown slightly rusty from lack of use.

“Nevertheless,” Mycroft Holmes replied. When there was no reaction, his brows lifted.

Without saying anything more, John turned and walked away, leaving the door open. He went to the window and stared down at the car parked in front of the building. The sight of it brought a wave of memories. 

//“How many friends do you imagine he has?”// 

//“What is your connection to Sherlock Holmes?”//

// “Could be dangerous.”//

The flood of remembrance was so strong it made him dizzy. He gripped the window ledge and closed his eyes briefly. Then he turned to face this clearly unwelcome guest.

Mycroft had closed the door quietly and was now standing in the middle of the room. He paused, taking a moment to study the surroundings.

John knew all too well what he was seeing. Dirty magnolia walls, a water-stained ceiling. The grimy and frayed three-piece secondhand suite. A plate abandoned after some forgotten meal. Newspapers piled in every corner. There was a corkboard cluttered with bits of paper and photographs.

On the far wall, a small desk provided the one respite from the clutter. It held only a laptop, a tidy stack of files and, incongruously, a skull. Each of the files was carefully labeled with the name of a past case. Mycroft’s eyes paused only once in their examination of the room. The gaze lingered on the wall hook beside the window, a hook that held a long dark coat and a blue scarf. Was he relieved to see that a good cleaning had removed all evidence of blood and gore?

For a moment, it seemed as if Mycroft might remark on the disorder or the skull or even, most dangerously, the coat. But he held his tongue. Diplomacy was a skill.

Instead, he merely settled, somewhat gingerly, into the lone armchair, leaning his umbrella against the table next to him. He adjusted the impeccable crease on his trousers. “I thought it was time we talked.”

John did not sit, choosing instead to stand in the middle of the room, feeling not unlike a boxer in the ring. A boxer who had suffered several rounds of brutal battering and who had little reserve strength left to carry on. He was staring at the floor. “I have absolutely nothing to say to you,” he replied, sounding very nearly bored.

“Perhaps I have something to say to you.”

Suddenly John looked up, his eyes blazing in the wan face. “You betrayed him,” he said hoarsely. “You gave Moriarty the tools he needed to destroy my best friend. Why the hell should I listen to anything you have to say?”

Mycroft had no answer to that, at least none that would satisfy this man, so he attempted none. Instead, his examination of the room apparently complete, he turned his attention to the resident standing in front of him.

Again, John knew exactly what Mycroft was seeing. He was much too thin, too pale, hadn’t bothered with shoes or socks, and couldn’t remember if he’d shaved that morning. And now that the brief fire in his eyes had faded, he knew that only emptiness met the coolly analytical gaze. Despite all, John still possessed more than a modicum of self-awareness and he knew exactly what the world saw when it looked at him.

Mycroft flicked some imagined bit of dirt from his sleeve, as he appeared to choose his words with extreme care. “I am sorry to see your circumstances so…reduced.”

John shrugged. “This is what an army pension gets you in London.”

“You’re not working?”

“No.” His very tone implied that it was a ridiculous concept. In addition, he was sure that Mycroft already knew the answer before he asked the question. Mycroft always knew everything. “I have more important things to do,” John said, glancing at the stack of case files.

Mycroft also looked at the desk, at the files piled there. Although this was probably not why he had come to see John Watson, he obviously felt an obligation to speak up anyway. “You have taken on an impossible task, John. Nothing in those files, nothing you can do, or say, or put on your blog will change what the world thinks of Sherlock. If the world even thinks of him at all anymore, which is extremely doubtful.”

Although it didn’t seem possible, John went even paler. “Go to hell,” he said sounding painfully raspy.  
For just the barest moment, the perpetually haughty expression slipped from Mycroft’s face. “This is not what Sherlock would have wanted for you,” he said in a tone that was unnaturally kind.

“Then he shouldn’t have jumped off St. Bart’s roof.” John might have intended his words to be bitter, but he only succeeded in sounding hopeless. He looked around the shabby room dismissively. “Besides, do you think any of this matters to me at all?”

Mycroft kept trying. “When he jumped, perhaps he felt there was no choice.”

Emotionally, John seemed dangerously balanced on the peak of an icy slope and obviously it would take very little to push him off. Now he flared again. “There was a choice. He could have trusted me. Together we could have handled the problem, whatever it was. Together worked for us.”  
Involuntarily, his eyes went to the wall hook. To the coat. “Sherlock and I could have handled it.” His voice cracked. John had demanded those things, the coat and the scarf, afterwards. Had railed until two days later, when a parcel arrived. Sadly, the necessary cleaning had removed all traces of the previous owner. It might have been a brand new coat. But he had wanted it, anyway.

There was a pause.

John took a deep breath.

Mycroft, uncharacteristically, sighed. “I think perhaps you spend too much time shut up in this room alone.”

“I’m never alone.”

His virgin attempt at therapy having failed, Mycroft gave up and moved on briskly. “I came here for a reason, John. There is some information that I think you need to know. Information that I was not free to pass along until now.”

John was still pacing. His expression did not change even a little at Mycroft’s words. “Secrets. It’s always secrets with you. Nothing alters in your universe.” He stopped moving and stared down at Mycroft as if suddenly struck by some new revelation. “Losing him, losing Sherlock, did not change your life at all, did it? Every day, every second, I feel like I’m still standing right there, watching him fall, and, meanwhile, you just carry on. You run the country and sit in your bloody club and ride around in that damned car as if he’d never even existed. You and the rest of the world just carry on.”  
“How I choose to deal with this situation is not relevant,” Mycroft snapped. “What would be accomplished by my falling apart?”

“Like me, you mean?” John started moving again, strode to the window and back. “Well, ‘falling apart’, as you put it, seems to me a perfectly reasonable reaction to seeing your best friend throw himself from the top of a very tall building. Watching him fall, wondering…” There was a catch in his voice and it took a moment before he continued. “…wondering if he was afraid. Seeing his blood on the pavement. Trying, trying so hard to find a pulse, knowing that there wouldn’t be one.” His voice was rising as he spoke. “What the hell should I do but fall apart?” He gave a bitter, glass-brittle laugh. “And don’t forget, I’m a past expert in not coping well with life. I had a bloody psychosomatic limp. And violent nightmares. Not forgetting the suicidal tendencies. So I’ve been through this before. Except that this time there is no one to pick me up and make me whole again.”

Mycroft made a gesture that was unreadable. “For God’s sake, John, sit down and let me say what I came here to say.”

“Of course. I’m sure the prime minister is waiting for you. Or the queen.” Another memory washed across him and the pain was physical, a hot knife in his gut that made him gasp. 

// Are you wearing pants? Get off my sheet! We solve crimes, I blog about it, and he forgets his pants.//

John dropped onto the sofa and stared at Mycroft. “So say whatever the hell it is. Say it and then please go away forever.”

Mycroft smoothed the front of his waistcoat. “When Sherlock went up to that rooftop to meet with Moriarty he thought he knew what to expect.” He glanced at John. “He even thought he might die.”

John felt cold, although the room was almost too warm. He wrapped both arms around himself.

“But he also must have believed that he might, in the end, triumph. After all…” He paused.

For the first time, John’s mouth softened into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “After all, he was Sherlock Holmes.”

“Precisely.” Mycroft seemed to organise his thoughts. “But even his brilliant mind was not prepared for what the threat turned out to be. My brother was willing to risk his own life to defeat the evil that was James Moriarty. The quixotic gesture was always his forte.” He grimaced. “But there were some things he would not risk.”

Without being aware of it, John began to rock back and forth slowly.

When Mycroft continued the tale, his voice was a flat monotone. “Moriarty had three trained assassins in position to strike. One was at Baker Street with Mrs. Hudson. The second was outside Lestrade’s office. And the third was at St. Bart’s with his weapon pointed at your head during that final conversation you had with Sherlock. Their orders were clear. Unless Sherlock had come down from that rooftop, you—and the other two—would have died instantly.”

Mycroft stopped and looked at John in that analytical way exclusive to the Holmes brothers, gauging the impact of his words before going on.

John was still rocking, not looking at him, not looking at anything at all, really.

But once started, Mycroft decided, there was nothing to do but tell it all. “True to character, Moriarty was excessively flamboyant in his plans. Hudson and Lestrade were, so to speak, overkill. One threat would have sufficed. Of course, Sherlock would not let innocent people—people he was close to, despite all of his protestations—die because of his folly. And folly it was, the way he dealt with Moriarty, right from the beginning. Arrogant folly. He thought it was a game. The damned fool.” Mycroft gave himself a slight shake. “But you had one thing right, John. If the threat had been only to Hudson and Lestrade, he would have had a plan. Some dramatic and no doubt also overly flamboyant way to save the day yet again. Because he would have had you at his side. The two rather ridiculous knight-errants. Even I acknowledge that you two were a formidable team. But that great adventure was not going to happen, because there was a gun pointed at your head, too. He would not sacrifice your life.” Mycroft stared into John’s eyes. “He jumped to save you, John.” He was perhaps not aware of how ruthless the words sounded. Perhaps.

John made a noise that was something between a moan and a sob. Then he rolled from the sofa and staggered out of the room.

He fell to his knees in front of the toilet just in time, retching over and over until there was nothing left to be expelled from his gut but bitter bile. The bile mixed with the hot salt of his tears.

It seemed a very long time before he had the strength to push himself up from the floor and return to the other room.

In his absence, Mycroft had searched the cupboard and found a bottle of whiskey kept there for the night hours, pouring some into an almost clean glass. He handed the drink to John. “Sit down.”

He really had no choice other than to obey, because his knees still seemed barely capable of supporting him. John took a long drink, and then lowered the glass. “He jumped to save me,” he said dully.

Mycroft returned to the chair. “I do not tell you these things to…cause you pain, John. Despite what you may think of me, I don’t believe I am gratuitously cruel. But I thought you deserved to know the full…” He hesitated over the next word, and then said it anyway. “…truth of what happened that day. To help you understand that it was not a lack of trust in you that led Sherlock to jump.” He grimaced. “In point of fact, I would have to say that it was instead a surfeit of caring. It seems my brother chose not to heed my advice when I told him that caring was not an advantage. I warned him that all hearts are broken.”

“Friends keep people safe,” John muttered, before finishing the drink.

“What?” Mycroft asked.

But John just shook his head. Then he said, “Never mind. Just something a very stupid man once said.”

“If it offers you any solace at all, John, rest assured that Moriarty’s network is in tatters and the three assassins have all been dealt with. At last. Yesterday the body of the final killer—actually the one targeting you—was pulled from the Volga.”

“Your doing, I suppose.”

The only response was a bland stare.

“Well, I hope that knowledge gives you some comfort on dark nights,” John said bitterly.

Unlikely as it seemed, Mycroft Homes appeared stung by the remark. “John, surely you know that I never wanted anything like this to happen.”

“Oh, I believe you never wanted it to happen.” Abruptly, something changed in John’s voice. He sounded more like the man he had been before his world crashed and burned. “That’s because you never even thought about it happening. Because all you cared about was your own agenda. Sherlock was not on that agenda. You once told me that you worried about him constantly. That was a lie.” There was a pause during which they did not look at one another. “I worried about him. You didn’t.”

Mycroft looked for a moment as if he wanted to dispute that, but he didn’t say anything.

John rested back against the sofa, looking even more exhausted and battered than before. “Thank you for this anyway. It matters.”

Mycroft stood, reaching for his umbrella. “Just one more thing before I go.”

John rubbed his eyes with the heel of one hand. “Really? One more thing? What? You want to rip my heart out? Already done, thanks.”

“Just…take care, John,” he said. “Please do nothing that would be irredeemable.”

John tilted his head back to look at him. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“Simply what I said. Take care of yourself. Sherlock took care. Do not make his sacrifice meaningless.” He walked to the door. “Goodbye, John,” he said.

The other man flinched at his words. //Goodbye, John.// “Do you know what I wish?” he asked before Mycroft was out the door.

“What?” Mycroft did not turn around. “What do you wish, John?”

“That the gunman had just taken the damned shot. I will wish that every day for the rest of my life.”

Without giving a response, Mycroft left.

John stayed where he was until he was sure that the limousine below was gone, not allowing himself to think. Then he stood up and went into the kitchen. There, he emptied the rest of the whiskey into his glass. Turning off the light, he went to stand by the window. The night seemed to wrap itself around him like a blanket.

“The darkness is what I know,” he murmured, toasting his reflection. “The darkness protects me.”

One hand reached out, almost of its own accord, and touched the soft blue scarf, twisting it between his fingers and holding on.  
He stood that way for a long time, until the street below was quiet, nearly empty of people and traffic, and the whiskey were both gone.

Only then did he turn away, releasing his hold on the scarf, and going to the desk. He opened the laptop and by the glow of the screen and the streetlight outside, he signed onto his blog. His fingers hovered over the keyboard as he considered the words to put down. Finally he began to type.

MY FRIEND SHERLOCK HOLMES DIED A HERO. I ALREADY KNEW THAT. I ALWAYS KNEW THAT. I WILL NOT STOP UNTIL THE REST OF THE WORLD KNOWS IT, TOO.

He paused before finding the words to continue.

UNTIL THEN I CAN’T REST.

He fully intended to stop there, but his fingers were still moving.

I WANT TO REST. I NEED PEACE.

He posted the entry, then sat staring at the screen for a few minutes, long enough to take idle note of one new hit. Then he shut the laptop.

Before standing, he opened the drawer to be sure that his army gun was still in its place, cleaned and loaded and waiting patiently. That was what gave him comfort on the dark nights.

“Good night,” he said to the room. Or maybe to the skull. Or just to whoever might be listening from somewhere.

He went to bed.

##


	2. The Sweeping Up The Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brotherly chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I share a secret? I would pay good money to see Mr. Gatiss and Mr. Cumberbatch play this scene. Alas, it shall only ever happen inside my head.

Chapter Two: The Sweeping Up the Heart

The sweeping up the Heart and putting  
love away. We shall not want to use it  
again until Eternity.

-Emily Dickinson

 

Mycroft Holmes despised policy meetings that were disguised as dinner parties. Such evenings tended to drag on long after his admittedly limited tolerance for the polite rituals involved had evaporated into peevishness. Much better, in his firmly held and oft-stated opinion, to simply have a meeting be a meeting, dispensing with fancy canapés and vacuous social chitchat, and ending at a decent hour, thus allowing a man to retire gracefully to his club for the balance of the evening.

Under normal circumstances, he could have turned down this particular ‘invitation’ with absolutely no ramifications and probably would have done so. But at the present time, with the events of six months ago still lingering over his reputation like a miasma, it seemed wise to remind others of his presence. It would not do to have anyone begin to think that either his grip on power or his influence were at all diminished by the unfortunate circumstances at St. Bart’s Hospital. Especially as a time was rapidly approaching when he would need his influence to be as effective as possible. There were going to be a lot of loose ends that would need tying up.

So he went to the dinner already in a grim mood, fervently hoping that some part of the evening could still be salvaged afterwards. But sadly there would be no pleasant hour or two spent within the soothing confines of the Diogenes this night. By the time the putative dinner party ended it was nearly midnight and all he wanted to do was go home. The meal, which he had perhaps partaken of with an irritating lack of self-restraint, left him feeling slightly bilious. Not to mention greatly in need of a cognac and the quiet pleasure of his own company.

Once home, he gratefully shed his jacket, though not the waistcoat or tie. He switched on the gas fire, more for ambience than warmth, and opened the antique walnut drinks cabinet.  
It was not until he had poured a perhaps over-generous amount of Camus Cognac Curee 3.128 into a crystal snifter that Mycroft belatedly realised he was not alone in the dimly-lit room. Weariness and pique had obviously blunted his edge. He paused, but did not even glance at the darkened corner. Instead, he merely took a second glass from the cabinet and poured an equal amount of cognac into it.

He carried both glasses to the table by the fire, settled into one of the twin leather armchairs, and waited.

It did not take long.

Only a few moments later, his brother stepped out of the shadows. “You might at least pretend some surprise at my return from the dead,” Sherlock said with a familiar petulance.

Mycroft indicated the second drink and chair. “You might as well make yourself comfortable. I’m sure that being dead is quite wearing on one.”

Sherlock moved forward and sat down. He lifted the snifter and inhaled, before taking a careful drink. “Very nice.”

“I should hope so, considering what it costs me.”

“Only the best for Mycroft Holmes.” Sherlock took another sip. “It is nice to find out that my palate hasn’t been completely destroyed by the deprivations of recent months. I have had a variety of remarkably hideous alcoholic beverages during my travels.”

“I can imagine.”

“I doubt that.”

The fact that Sherlock was even talking about his palate was a worrying sign of what kind of shape he was in. His brother did not care about things like that, never had, and had in fact spent years mocking Mycroft for his interest in gourmet foods and fine liquors.

Beyond that, Mycroft’s first impression was that Sherlock most closely resembled a man not long out of a sickbed. There was a pale luminosity in his face and his eyes were sunken. His clothes had not been cleaned or pressed in some time and they hung awkwardly on his even-thinner-than-usual frame. Annoyingly, his innate elegance seemed undiminished, which irritated his brother. A moment later Mycroft at least had the grace to chastise his own pettiness.

“So?” Sherlock said. “Not even a hint of surprise at seeing me alive?”

Mycroft frowned, as if offended that his professional competence had been maligned. “Did you honestly think that I wouldn’t discover the truth about your little plot? A noble effort, yes, and your own private pathologist might have convinced everyone else, but I am a meticulous man.”

“Of course.” Sherlock leaned back and stared at him. “But for a moment? An hour? A day?”

Mycroft shrugged nonchalantly. “It can be difficult to dismiss eyewitness testimony. Even if the primary witness is essentially catatonic.”

He was disappointed that Sherlock did not respond to that except by blinking twice. “Surely I at least get some credit for a flawless scheme?”

“Flawless?” Mycroft considered the word. “Rather too much collateral damage for my taste. But, yes, all in all, an efficient operation. Of course, I would have expected no less of you.”

“Thank you.” Sherlock was apparently distracted by the flames.

Mycroft took advantage of the moment to eye him more closely. Despite the almost light-hearted tone of some of his brother’s words, the eyes stayed shadowed and the face showed not even the memory of a smile. There was a tautness to his features that Mycroft had never seen before on his brother’s face.

Sherlock took another sip of the cognac. “Well, even if you knew that I wasn’t actually dead, you might at least acknowledge some surprise at seeing me here in your sanctuary.”

Mycroft would not even give him that much. “When I found out three days ago that Milos Kastanivitch had been found floating in the Volga badly beaten and with a rather tidy coup d’ grace bullet hole in the center of his forehead, I anticipated your return sooner rather than later. Kastanivitch was the third and final assassin.” Now he did raise his glass in a toast that was not entirely ironic. “Three internationally wanted killers found out, tracked down, and dispatched within six months. Not to mention the others. You essentially have destroyed the Moriarty empire single-handedly. And from what I understand, none of them died a particularly easy death. Especially Kastanivitch.” His tone remained thoughtful. “I’m not sure I ever fully appreciated your ruthless nature, Sherlock.”

Sherlock acknowledged the words. “I was motivated. And I did learn ruthlessness from the best, starting in the nursery.”   
“You’re welcome,” Mycroft said. “There are some in government circles—those very few who are aware of what has happened—who have expressed themselves quite astounded by your accomplishment.”

“Then they hadn’t been paying enough attention previously,” Sherlock snapped.

“True. So how did you manage it?”

Sherlock sighed. “How do you think? Legwork. That thing you despise. I spent all my time in dark alleys and rat holes all over Europe.” He frowned. “There is one unfinished piece of business.”

“Moran,” Mycroft said.

Sherlock looked a bit startled at that.

Mycroft huffed. “Please, Sherlock, give me some credit.” His gaze turned thoughtful. “Although I confess to some surprise that you would risk returning whilst Seb Moran is still on the loose.”

“I can’t find him,” Sherlock muttered; he never liked admitting failure. “Might be dead, of course.”

A moue of disappointment crossed Mycroft’s lips. “Actually, my information is that he might well be in London.”

Sherlock thought about that. He didn’t ask the question.

Mycroft answered it anyway. “There is protection in place.”

Sherlock gave a sharp nod. 

Now it was Mycroft’s turn to study the flames. Time, he decided, to make the first real move in this quiet battle. “The good Dr. Watson credits me with your reign of bloody vengeance, you know.”

Sherlock stilled. “You see John?”

“I saw him two nights ago. That was actually the first time since a couple of days after your supposed death. On that first occasion he damned me to hell, broke a perfectly good umbrella across his knee, and said he never wanted to see my face again. I believe there was even violence threatened if our paths should ever cross, even accidentally.” He glanced at Sherlock. “That kind of attitude did not make it easy to maintain contact.”  
Again, whatever Sherlock might—or might not—be feeling was hidden behind a blank expression. “In that case, why did you risk life and limb to go to see him two days ago?”

Mycroft ignored the question. “Of course, he was not completely wrong to give me some of the credit.”

Sherlock looked displeased. “What does that mean?”

“Well, dear brother, you surely didn’t think that your brilliance alone would have penetrated certain highly secret government sites? That ridiculous on-line identity would not have gotten you very far. Not without considerable help from inside.”

“Cracked it, did you?”

“JVYILDDBOGLEKT998Y?” Mycroft rattled it off quickly then sighed deeply. “It was rather disappointing, actually. A simple Caesar cipher? You know better than that.”

Sherlock dismissed his words with a wave. “I had other things on my mind. Besides, had I made it ten times more difficult—which I could have easily done, of course—and you tried, I’d still have been found out.”

“Of course.” He gave a faint smile. “ Still, I suspect you were hoping that someone with lesser skills would also be able to crack it.”

Sherlock said nothing.

“But there is a flaw in that particular part of the plan, isn’t there? Why would anyone who watched you fall to your death even try to crack the code in an oddball email address?”

“I never sent any emails.” Sherlock seemed to tire of the topic. His mood was too mercurial to get a grasp on. “So it appears I do owe you some thanks,” he said, not sounding the least bit grateful. “Without the help from Her Majesty’s Secret Service my task might have been much more difficult.”

“Quite impossible, I should have thought.”

“Like those other civil servants you underestimate me.”

“Oh, never.” Mycroft decided it was time to steer the conversation back in the direction he wanted it to go. “One thing has puzzled me for months, Sherlock.”  
“Really? How shocking. I always thought you were all-knowing.” Frankly, the sneer was somewhat half-hearted.

Mycroft simply smiled. “Probably best to continue in that belief. Still, I never understood why you would trust Molly Hooper with the truth? Why her, of all people? And not John Watson?”

“I needed her expertise and access, of course. And she didn’t know the whole truth, just what was necessary.”

“And you knew that because of her...infatuation with you, she would keep your secret.”

Sherlock conceded that wordlessly.

“She did, as it happens. By the time she spoke to me, I already knew the truth so she did not feel as if it were a betrayal of your trust.”

“I warned Molly that you would be interrogating her at some point.”

Mycroft glared. “I spoke with her, Sherlock. We had a conversation. There was no interrogation.”

“Of course not.”

“Still, that isn’t what I want to talk about. You trusted her. And not John? You didn’t think he would keep your secret?”

“He would have carried it to his grave had I asked him to,” Sherlock said flatly. “Even through a Mycroft Holmes interrogation. Oh, excuse me, ‘conversation’.”

“But--?”

Sherlock ran a hand through his already untidy hair. “But I could also trust that Molly Hooper would not set off in pursuit, chasing me to the ends of the earth and back, in some chivalric, albeit misguided, attempt to protect me. Save me. I don’t know, whatever it is that John does. “ He flinched visibly. “Did.”

“Not always so misguided,” Mycroft felt bound to point out.

After a moment, Sherlock shook his head. “No,” he murmured. Then his voice hardened. “This time the risk was too great. But he would never have understood that.”

“I see.”

For the first time, a hint of bitter amusement touched Sherlock’s eyes, but it came nowhere near his lips. “No, Mycroft, I don’t think you ever did.”

Mycroft did not dispute that. “Regardless, I do agree that had John known you were alive, engaging in that grand show of bloody justice—or vengeance—however you want to name it, he would have found you. No matter what it took to do so.”

“Oh, yes.” Sherlock took a sizable gulp of his drink, then repeated more softly, “Oh, yes.”

This was the opening for which Mycroft had been, not terribly patiently, waiting. Time for just the smallest prick with the sharp point of his rhetorical blade. “And you did not want that?” As he asked the question, Mycroft looked directly into Sherlock’s face. He could not even recognise the expression he saw on those familiar features as belonging to his younger brother. It was so foreign to what he was accustomed to seeing there that it took a moment for him to label it. Brutal and naked honesty. 

“Of course I wanted that. More than---” Somewhat belatedly, Sherlock seemed to realise what he was saying and his mask fell back into place. “It wasn’t possible. Everything that had happened was my fault almost as much as Moriarty’s. John did not deserve to die for my mistakes. For my hubris.”

“True.” Mycroft turned thoughtful. “Although he would have done so. Willingly.”

“Which is why I couldn’t let it happen.”

“My god,” Mycroft said. “Everything I have always thought about human emotion and caring is being proved out. You are an unexpected but a rather spectacular laboratory specimen, Sherlock.” It was primarily a joke [although an ill-timed one, he accepted] but he instantly regretted saying it aloud, hoping it wouldn’t cause Sherlock to end the conversation. He quickly moved to recover. “In point of fact, the good doctor believes that what happened was in large measure my fault.”

Sherlock seemed to have ignored his earlier remark. Or possibly he hadn’t even heard it, as his attention seemed to wander off at random moments. But this time he responded. “You certainly do bear a part of the blame. After all, you did help make it possible for Moriarty to do what he did.”  
“I accept that. And I am sorry for it. I even told John that, before you ever took your plunge. His reaction was not gracious. He did not seem to understand that, at the time, I thought what I did was for the best.”

“No, he wouldn’t understand that. John has an excess of old-fashioned honour, you see. But you are forgiven for not recognising that rare attribute when you see it, since you work for the government.” 

Mycroft turned the snifter in his fingers. “I apologise to you now, if it matters.”

Sherlock looked surprised. “Really? The last time you apologized to me I was seven and you’d just pushed me down a flight of stairs. I broke my arm.”

“That was an accident.”

“Nonsense. You were angry because I’d checkmated you ten times in a row. And the only reason you apologized then was because Mother insisted.”

Mycroft opened his mouth and then closed it again without arguing the point. Although he could have pointed out the apology he’d uttered over the Irene Adler debacle, he did not.

Sherlock swirled the cognac and watched the flames dance through the shifting hues. “However, to give credit where it’s due, you did put whatever guilt you felt to good use.”

Mycroft raised an inquisitive brow.

“I did see the rather impressive headstone erected in my honour. So even knowing that I was actually alive, you didn’t shirk in your fraternal duty.”

Mycroft felt his face flush. Or maybe it was just the heat from the fire. “I would have…I was intending…”

Now it was Sherlock’s turn to look curious.

Mycroft made an impatient gesture. “John did that on his own,” he said. “I offered in several letters to at least share the expense, which was considerable. He never replied.”

Sherlock rubbed a finger slowly across his upper lip, but didn’t say anything. He was staring at a vintage hunting print on the wall, but not really seeing it, Mycroft knew. What was going on behind the shadowed gaze? That was what he needed—or at least wanted—to know. Very much.

“Why did you go to the cemetery?” he asked in the soft voice he had long ago perfected in order to catch the subject off-guard.

“To see John. To make sure he was all right,” Sherlock replied. Then his gaze sharpened. He hadn’t intended to say that either. “I was naturally curious,” he muttered.

“I’m sure. And was he?”

“What?”

“Was John ‘all right’ as you put it?”

Sherlock chose not to answer.

“Well,” Mycroft said wryly, “at least he was no longer catatonic. That’s something, I suppose.”

Sherlock finished the cognac in a gulp, swallowed badly, choked briefly.

Mycroft politely waited until he had recovered. “About John,” he said then.

“Yes?” Sherlock straightened in the chair. “You saw him two days ago?” He was obviously making a concerted effort to sound relaxed. An effort, which in Mycroft’s expert opinion, was failing rather magnificently. “And how is he?”

Mycroft decided that for the moment anyway, he would proceed at Sherlock’s pace. “Just how do you imagine he is? You’ve read the blog, I’m sure.”

Sherlock shook his head. “I suppose…I just assumed that the blog had ended. After all, what would be the point? There are no more cases and that was all he ever blathered on about.”

Mycroft was unsure about whether or not to believe him. “You haven’t checked it even once, in all these months?”

There was a long pause.

“Two nights ago,” Sherlock said finally. “I was sitting in a Prague coffee shop, waiting for the flight to London. Bored to distraction.”  
“And when you looked at it, finally, what did you think?”

“He was still blathering on about old cases. No idea why.”

“You should have read the words more carefully.”

Sherlock sighed. “I was tired. Sick and tired of it all.”

“Yes. Understandable, under the circumstances, I suppose. Perhaps I should explain then.”

“Oh, your wisdom is always invaluable.”

“You came to me,” Mycroft reminded him sharply.

Sherlock nodded wearily, accepting that.

“John continues to ‘blather on’ as you put, because he is trying to prove that those cases were real, not some figment of your diabolical imagination. That the solutions were genuine. That Sherlock Holmes was neither a criminal mastermind nor a lying fraud. To accomplish this, John lives on his army pension, spending every day and most nights, I imagine, attempting to salvage your tattered reputation.”

Sherlock seemed to want to ignore most of what he said, picking up only on one rather minor detail. “Living on his army pension? Why? There was money from all the cases we worked. He has complete access, of course. John was the one who made sure the money owed was paid. Even after splashing out on that hunk of marble there would have been enough.”

Mycroft shook his head. “He won’t touch it. Not even for the headstone. It’s my understanding that he borrowed money from his sister and has been paying her back from the Army money. Consequently, he is living in a rather foul flat on a dilapidated housing estate in West London.”

Abruptly, Sherlock jumped up from the chair and went to the window. He pulled the heavy drapery back so that he could look out at the Thames below. His voice, when he finally spoke, was so soft that Mycroft could only just hear the words, words that he knew cost his brother a great deal to utter. “I do not care about the blog, or the headstone, or the bloody estate flat. Would you just tell me about John?” He paused. “I’m curious.”

Having achieved his goal, Mycroft could afford to be gracious. He got up and carried both glasses back to the cabinet. Trying not to wince at what this brotherly heart-to-heart [and the irony of that phrase used in regard to the Holmes brothers was not lost on him] was costing him in the world’s most expensive cognac, he poured each snifter too full once again. He walked over to the window and handed one glass to Sherlock, using the opportunity to stare into his face. Then he returned to his chair.

He was still trying to put his finger on what had been troubling him from the moment Sherlock stepped out of the shadows. As he studied the other man’s profile in the flickering firelight, he finally began to see what had eluded him thus far. It was not a truth that made him very comfortable. 

While it was a fact that, despite what the world [including John Watson believed], Sherlock’s body had not perished on the pavement outside Barts six months ago, he now realised that something had indeed died that day.

Sherlock didn’t appear to notice the extended pause in the conversation. In fact, he was apparently completely unconcerned about whether or not Mycroft ever spoke again. He just took a sip of the cognac and set the glass on the window ledge, still watching the river below.

It was not in Mycroft’s nature to philosophise about such things, so it took him a moment to understand what exactly he was thinking. To comprehend what had actually happened when his brother jumped off that rooftop.

Sherlock’s singular spirit was gone. Mycroft might have thought soul had he believed in such a thing. Whatever it was called, the thing that had energized, motivated, made Sherlock who he was, had disappeared. Once lost could such an ephemeral thing ever be found again?

Mycroft was not happy wading into such murky existential waters.

Enough, he thought angrily, enough of these ridiculous meanderings. It was time to get back to what he was best at. But he could not resist one more small deviation from the path he was following. Nanny had been so right all those years ago. Curiosity was a terrible thing. “Sherlock, what happened on that roof between you and Moriarty before you jumped?”

“None of your business,” was the immediate reply.

“Really?”

Sherlock swore under his breath. “It was something that I am sure will never happen to you, Mycroft. I discovered, suddenly and shockingly, that I am human. A stupid, arrogant human being just like all of those I have spent my life despising. I had made an unforgivable mistake and people were going to die. Are you happy now?”  
Mycroft shook his head. “Surprisingly, no. But if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’m sure the feeling will pass. After all, human beings have not changed and they will irritate you all over again.” He took what he hoped Sherlock would see as a sympathetic pause. Always a good thing before moving in for the kill.

This time the knife would be inserted into the particular tender spot where it could do the most harm.

Immediately Mycroft felt on much firmer ground.

He used his softest, most civilized voice. “Would you like to know what John said when I saw him?”

A slow nod was the only answer

“He said, and I do believe this is an exact quote, ‘Every day, every second, I feel like I’m still standing there watching him fall.’ That doesn’t sound to me like a man ready to move on with his life.”

He saw Sherlock’s spine stiffen, but there was no other response.

Mycroft knew how to do his job very well. “Oh, and he also said that while you were falling, he wondered if you were afraid.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, before Sherlock turned and looked at him. “I made him watch. He had to believe it and the only way he would do that was to see it happen. So I asked him to keep his eyes on me.”

“And therefore he watched every moment of your fall.”

“Of course he did.”

“Because you asked him to.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said quietly. “Because I asked him to.”

“Amazing.” Mycroft shrugged. “Well, you thought it was necessary. Necessity can sometimes be extraordinarily cruel, as I have often found. And that particular bit of cruelty also had another advantage: While watching only you, he missed other things that were going on.”

There was another pause.

Sherlock spoke first. “Why did you go to see him?”  
“Because once the threat was gone, I thought he deserved to know the truth.”

Something very like panic registered on Sherlock’s face.

Mycroft raised a calming hand. “No, I didn’t tell him that you’re alive. That’s your responsibility, don’t you think?”

“Then what did you tell him?”

“The truth about why you jumped from that rooftop.”

For just a moment something of the old Sherlock appeared. It was reassuring to see. “You had no right to do that,” he said angrily.

Mycroft savored a sip of the cognac before replying. “He thought it was because you didn’t trust him.”

Sherlock looked genuinely puzzled, which was something of a novelty. “Didn’t trust him?”

“Specifically to help solve the immediate problem, to fix whatever it was that had gone so horribly wrong that he found you standing on the edge of that roof. Do you understand what that means?” He didn’t bother waiting for Sherlock to reply. “It means that until my visit the other night, John had lived for over six months in the belief that he had failed you in some way he didn’t even understand. And that you had died because of his failure. He may have blamed me. He certainly blamed Moriarty. But more than anything or anyone else, he blamed himself.”

This time it was both hands dragged through his hair, which Mycroft now noticed needed a good wash “Idiot.”

Mycroft nodded. “I as much told him the same thing—although with somewhat more tact I’d like to think—over the fact that he is spending his life trying to prove to the world that Sherlock Homes was not a fraud, a fool, a liar. He wants to turn you back into a hero.” Mycroft fleetingly considered a cigarette, but shook off the urge. He would have more than enough to regret in the morning as it was. “Although other than John Watson himself, I don’t know how many people ever took you seriously in that role.”

“No one at all, I should imagine.” Sherlock turned back to look out the window again, watching a barge passing below. “You shouldn’t have told him. Now John will be feeling guilty about that.”

“I’m sure. But he deserved to know.”

Sherlock glanced back at him. “I didn’t realise my brother had suddenly developed a sense of morality.”

“It’s transient. You just happened to drop in on a good night, it seems.”

The barge had caught Sherlock’s attention again. “I didn’t intend…”

“The road to hell, dear brother, the road to hell.”

“I never took that literally before,” Sherlock said bleakly.

Mycroft stalled, wondering how much further he should go. There was always the danger of asking one question too many. But he’d come this far and it struck him that this single night might be the only opportunity to find out everything he wanted to know. And he still had cognac in his glass, so why not? “There was one other thing John said when we spoke the other evening.”

“Well, I probably don’t want to hear it.”

“Most definitely not.”

“But you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“For your own good.”

Sherlock gave a short, sharp laugh. “That’s what you told me when I was five and you dangled me by my ankles from a barn rafter.”

“And I’m sure you’re a better man for it.”

Without warning, Sherlock spun around. The expression on his face was that of a man who had tracked down and viciously killed three ruthless assassins in six months. “Shut up!” he shouted. Then he took a deep, steadying breath and spoke more quietly, but no less dangerously. 

“Enough. No more of your bloody games, Mycroft.”

“Quite right,” Mycroft said in a placating tone. It was important to relax the subject a little before administering the ultimate blow. He took a drink and waited for Sherlock to do the same.

But Sherlock only watched him warily.  
“John said that he wished the gunman had taken the shot. Allow me one more direct quote: ‘I will wish that every day for the rest of my life.’ I believed him.”

Sherlock lifted the snifter once again and drained it. He set it down so hard that it shattered. He stared at the shards on the floor. “He wouldn’t do what you’re suggesting.”

“Kill himself? Possibly not. But perhaps if you had read the blog more closely, you wouldn’t be quite so sanguine about it.”

Sherlock went very still and Mycroft knew that he was no longer standing in this London study, not in his mind. Instead, he was back in that coffee shop in Prague, reading again the blog entries he’d read two nights before. It was rather fascinating, Mycroft had always thought, to watch his brother think, so he just sat quietly and waited. After a couple of minutes, Sherlock sighed and lifted one hand to rub his forehead. “Damn,” he said finally. “Damn. Why didn’t I…?”

“As you said, you were tired.”

“Stupid, stupid.”

Mycroft took some pity on him. “I did tell him not to do anything that couldn’t be undone. But when he decides that your honour has been restored or as is more likely finally realises that will never happen, I’m not entirely sure that John Watson will have anything left to live for.”

Sherlock just shook his head stubbornly.

Mycroft sighed. “Not for the first time, I am working from information that you don’t have.”

“What information?”

“You do know that he had a therapist?”

“Of course.”

“Before you two became…pals, her case notes revealed a constant concern that her patient was suicidal. A significant risk, she said. He saw her once more after your supposed death. Again, she indicates that he is dangerously depressed. Dangerously. Her word, not mine.”

“He wouldn’t kill himself.”  
“Why not? You did. Apparently. So why shouldn’t he, when things go so wrong that there seems no possible alternative? A precedent has been set.”

Sherlock just shook his head again, although less firmly this time.

“Dammit, Sherlock, I have seen the man. And speaking of which, when do you plan on doing so?”

“Should I?” Sherlock crouched and started to pick up the pieces of broken glass. One jagged edge nicked a finger and a bright bud of red appeared.

“Leave it,” Mycroft said sharply.

Sherlock dropped the shards. “It might be better if I just stayed…dead.” He sucked the cut finger.

“Oh, dear, Sherlock, please don’t be a bigger fool than you must be. Perhaps I haven’t explained the situation clearly enough to you. John Watson is a man on the road to self-destruction.” Mycroft chose his words carefully, so they would be unequivocal. “John will die and you will be responsible.”

“No.” That was all Sherlock said. He walked back to the chair and collapsed into it, staring at the fire. It was several moments before he spoke. A faint almost smile twitched one corner of his mouth. “Did you hear about John punching the police superintendent?”

Of course he had, but, bemused by this turn, Mycroft shook his head.

“The night everything blew up. They’d arrested me and hauled me downstairs. Then John joined me. Apparently the superintendent had called me a weirdo.”

“And John hit him?”

“Broke his nose.” The corner of his mouth twitched again. “Of course, John himself has called me much worse than that any number of times.”

“He’s allowed.” Mycroft needed to shift the mood again, turning brisk. “Sherlock, there is one question I must ask you.”

“Must you?”

“Yes.” He could only hope that this was the correct direction in which to take the conversation. It was always a balancing act, one at which he was normally very good. The best, in fact. But this was far from a normal situation.

“Then ask it.” Sherlock sounded like a man so weary of life that he no longer cared about what was happening or what was said.

It occurred to Mycroft that the tone of Sherlock’s words was not unlike what he’d heard in John’s voice when they’d talked. What a pair, he thought grimly. What on earth had the fates been thinking when they brought these two together? It was like theatre, but whether he was watching Restoration comedy or Shakespearean tragedy was unclear. Maybe there was no way of knowing for sure until the final curtain fell.

“What do you want to happen now? Do you plan to lurk in shadows for the rest of your life? To be essentially dead before you die?”

Sherlock shook his head.

“Then what do you want?”

Now there was something in Sherlock’s face that brought to Mycroft’s mind the small boy he had known long ago, before the fog of time and a mutually destructive antipathy became their only shared reality.

“I want what I had,” Sherlock said in a quiet voice. He spread his hands in what might have been helplessness, hopelessness, or possibly just confusion over the fact that when it came down to it, what he wanted, what the singular being that was Sherlock Holmes wanted was, in fact, so ordinary. “I just want what I had.”

Mycroft rather surprised himself by not smiling in triumph. Instead, he just nodded and said, “Then it is up to you. You have to do something towards that end. Otherwise one day, probably quite soon, you will pick up a newspaper and see a very small human interest story at the bottom of the page reporting that Dr. John Watson, once known as the chronicler and companion of the disgraced consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, has put his service weapon into his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

Now Sherlock’s hands clenched, but he didn’t say anything.

Mycroft could feel his patience stretched thin, as it so often was when dealing with this man. “You saved John’s life before. “

“And he has saved mine more than once,” Sherlock said. “Including the night after we met.”  
“Granted. Now you have to save him again. Not by dying this time, or even by killing, but by having the courage to live.” He could only hope that what he’d said didn’t sound nearly as pompous and melodramatic aloud as it did in his own head. 

It didn’t matter, anyway, because Sherlock had already moved on. “What could I say? How can I ever explain?”

Sherlock never came to him for advice. It was clear that he hadn’t wanted to ask for help now and Mycroft was disconcerted that he had actually done so. Would life ever get back to what passed for normal in the Holmes family?

“Just tell him the truth.” Mycroft met his eyes again. “Perhaps the whole truth, whatever that might be.”

“Whatever that might be.” It was clear that Sherlock didn’t know either. “Will he even listen after finding out that you knew, that Molly Hooper knew, that I was alive, and he didn’t? He didn’t?”

Mycroft shrugged. “I suppose he might be…hurt, whatever that means. People do get hurt, don’t they? Or, quite possibly, he will be furious. Take my word for it—or ask Lestrade—John can do furious very well.” He paused, not quite sure when or how the conversation had slipped from his hands. But this turn to discussing Human Emotions, especially with Sherlock, was definitely discomfiting.

He was experienced enough to know, however, that there was no going back now. Still, he took another moment to get the words right.

“If we must discuss this, and it seems we must, let me just say something.”

Rather surprisingly, Sherlock gave him his full attention, which was also disturbing in a way Mycroft couldn’t define.

“I know one thing for certain. If John Watson believes in any kind of a higher power—“ he shot a brief glance at his brother “-other than you, of course, then I imagine that every night he lies in bed and pleads with the universe to send you back. That you not be dead. For a miracle, in short. He may be hurt, he may be angry, but in the end, it will not matter, because you will be alive. And not incidentally, at least to you I assume, so will he.”

Sherlock was slumped in the chair, but there was nothing to be read in the expression on his face. His mind was obviously in a faraway place.  
As for Mycroft, he suddenly realised that this entire conversation had quite exhausted him. “Coffee?” he suggested, primarily to get out of this room and away from Sherlock if only for a short time.

There was no response and he had not expected one.

He went into the kitchen, where his daily help always left a coffee tray set up, so all he had to do was push a button and wait.

Only a few minutes later, he walked back into the study carrying the tray.

The room was empty.

He had not heard the door open or close, but Sherlock had always been able to move like a cat when he wanted to.

“Damn him,” Mycroft said aloud.

He sat in front of the fire again and sipped the really quite excellent Brazilian blend, listening to the blessed silence that surrounded him.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A simple cipher, indeed. Not for me, of course. But assuming I got it right, this is what it says:
> 
> My blogger John W 221B


	3. There's A Certain Slant Of Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John takes a walk and things about things. While not thinking about other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, hope you are enjoying this. Comments always welcome.

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us-  
We can find no scar,  
But internal differences,  
Where the Meanings are.

-Emily Dickinson

 

John Watson was, quite frankly, surprised to find himself walking along Baker Street. He never came here, never even came anywhere near here, because the last time he dared to return to this neighborhood, this road, 221B, which had been on the day he’d first visited the grave, his heart had cracked so effectively that it fell into two distinct pieces. On that occasion he had not actually even gone into 221B, but only sat in the cab and waited for Mrs. Hudson to come out. Even that was too much. Just sitting there, he had felt his heart rip apart and heard it crash. When he thought about it, which woefully happened much more often than it should have [like picking incessantly at a scab until it bled all over again, which horrible as it sounded still satisfied some primal need], John always pictured a glacier falling apart in a warming ocean. And it was a sad fact, a tragic fact, very probably a scientific fact although he couldn’t swear to it, that some things, like Humpty Dumpty, shattered hearts and broken glaciers, could not be put back together. Or, if such unlikely repairs could be made, John Watson had absolutely no idea how to make them. Despite his extensive medical training.

Luckily that didn’t really matter at all to him. He could do what he had to do just fine with that part of himself so comprehensively ruined. Actually, in some unexplainable way, it even pleased him. Destruction as Tribute.

So bloody appropriate. In the circumstances.

Well, the circumstances.

Didn’t really bear thinking of, did they, so he refused to think about them. He could do that, not think about The Very Bad Things, because he had once been a soldier, until the Army no longer cared, and a doctor until he no longer cared, and the loyal companion of the world’s only Consulting Detective, until. That sentence had to end right there. He could do that, too. The point was, both soldiers and doctors saw lots of things that were better not thought about. It had become very clear, however, that being the former colleague of the World’s Only Consulting Detective [now deceased] did not necessarily allow one to exercise that same Not Thinking About skill. John tried, of course, because he was a tough and determined man and occasionally he even managed it. His record at this point for Not Thinking About things best not thought about was 2.3 minutes. Not exactly an Olympic time yet, but it was still early days.

All in all then, after yet another long walk in the middle of one more endless night, the discarded soldier [who had bad days], the lapsed doctor [who could not even manage a simple task like stitching together his own fragmented heart] and the spectacularly failed Consulting Detective’s colleague [who could not even stop his best friend from leaping into the abyss], was startled to find himself once again on Baker Street.

Hallowed Ground, he did not allow himself to think. For more than a split second at any rate.

Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side, someone he once knew had never tired of saying.

Well, Mr. Sodding Genius, truer words were never spoken, thought the loser.

A few faceless pedestrians passed him obliviously; several taxis glided by as he continued to approach the door of 221B.

Despite the passersby and the cabbies, he was absolutely certain that no one but he himself saw the ghosts on the pavement. Only John Watson was gazing, with love and hate all mixed up together upon the shimmering spectre of two painfully careless idiots who thought they knew all the rules. Who thought they could break those rules at will and still survive. Two men who laughed at danger, mocked death, and ran towards the funeral pyre hand in hand, planning to leap the flames together and then go for Chinese. Not forgetting to check the lower third of the doorknob before going in.

//What the devil am I doing here?//

He asked that question of the universe and, predictably, the universe ignored him, as it always did.

John had a theory about that, as it happened. The universe wasn’t so much ignoring him as realising that while only one body had hit the pavement that day outside Barts, two lives actually ended. And he couldn’t really blame the universe for that realisation. John had never been so arrogant, unlike some others [well, one other] he could have named, but did not, as to expect anything else from the universe anyway. A man who mattered to no one and to whom no one else mattered, could hardly expect the universe to take any notice of him at all.

Sherlock [actually thinking the name still gave him a jolt] had the right idea after all, it seemed, just deleting the whole universe from his brain before it could erase him.

//I don’t want to be here.//

//I cannot be here.//

But he knocked on the door anyway, because something deep inside told him he had to. Told him that maybe his life could get better if he went back inside this building. Of course, that was hard to believe, mainly because there was nothing deep inside of him, save for a black hole that, as black holes did, sucked everything else into the darkness where it vanished. Never to be seen again. Like some other things he could have named. But did not because, just at the moment, John was not in the mood to wallow.

What next, he asked himself almost light-heartedly, trying to decipher the meaning to be found in tealeaves? Too bad there were none of the chicken entrails he had once found residing next to his Branston Pickle. He might find the answer there.

Oh, hell, for all he knew, the meaning of life, if it wasn’t actually 42, might well reside in a jar of gentleman’s relish.

He was glad that there was no response to his knock. Mrs. Hudson must have been away, perhaps visiting her sister. Or maybe just sleeping, he thought, remembering the time. Didn’t matter why she didn’t answer. It was a good thing, because finding John on the doorstep would undoubtedly provoke the same mournful expression and halting words he remembered all too well from their last conversation months ago. He knew, had known then, even as he rejected her sympathy with hard-edged words [words he later regretted and wrote a note apologizing for] that she meant well. In that same note he asked her to please not visit him anymore because it was too hard. It was hard for her, as well, he was sure, so perhaps cutting her from his life was a kindness to an elderly lady and not simply an act of bitter self-indulgence. Although John was not absolutely sure about that. He did worry about it, but only on alternate Wednesdays. Between 11:00 and noon, because that was the time he devoted to Thinking About Other Things. Everyone had told him that he should try thinking about something else and because he had an agreeable nature, John relented to that extent. No one knew it, of course, besides him.

But he accepted it had to be hard for her, as well, being reminded of the past, because she had loved Sherlock like a tall, noisy and unruly son. John accepted that she had grown fond of him as well, if for no other reason than she thought he treated Sherlock better than the rest of the world most often did. [She was aware, as was John, that the rest of the world did have some justification for that.] Anyway, if Sherlock liked him, that was enough for her.

Mrs. Hudson, a good woman, was never one of those who thought that Sherlock Holmes was incapable of any sort of human feelings. In fact, it often seemed that she was primarily bemused by the blindness of so many others.

He sometimes thought of one particular night when a couple of lagers had loosened a certain ex-army captain’s tongue before he invaded their landlady’s parlour. He had been feeling quite reasonably insulted by a number of cutting remarks made by the impatient sodding idiot detective just moments before said idiot had swirled his bloody coat and dashed off on his own. [Insulted? Or maybe the word should be hurt. No, insulted was better. After all, a soldier could be insulted, but he shouldn’t really be hurt by a flatmate’s comments.] At any rate, apparently the Resident Blogger was too ineffably stupid to be of any help in the present instance, so he was left alone, excluded from the adventure.

But the kindly woman who was not their housekeeper only smiled gently as John ranted.

“I have known Sherlock a lot longer than you have,” she pointed out quietly. “He depends on you, John. Oh, gracious, he’s devoted to you. I don’t think…” She paused, biting her lip just for a moment, as if debating whether or not to say, the words that she so obviously wanted to say. Then she gave a quick nod, seeming to decide that whether or not they had to be said, they most definitely needed to be heard. “I don’t think he would be able to manage anymore without you, John. And I’m sure a lot of other people know that as well. Make of it what you will.”

What was one supposed to make of that? And much later, after all the stars went dark, John wondered why people [including the usually perceptive Mrs. Hudson] thought that he should or would be able to manage on his own? Had the situation been reversed [a scenario that was often in his mind] would she or anyone else have said to Sherlock that he simply needed to face life’s horrors and carry on? John seriously doubted that. He did not think it showed an excess of ego to feel that had he jumped off that roof as Sherlock watched his flatmate would have been...well, what? A sad remnant of what he once was? Not impossible. In that case, it seemed to John that far from telling him to stiff-upper-lip it, everyone would have pitied the arrogant and lonely sod. Treated him gently. Fetched him tea and toast, despite whatever cutting remarks he would make. [Why can’t any of you idiots make a simple cup of tea like John used to?] The other person would understand that Sherlock was not really talking about bloody tea at all. Whoever was there would undoubtedly just pat him on the shoulder and feel sorry for the bastard. Even if he had thrown the tea and the toast at the wall just as John had once done. Annoying gits, at least the brilliant ones, could get away with a lot, it seemed.

Sometimes it was difficult to be a hard-arsed ex-soldier who would only be allowed to display a grimace or two in the face of tragedy and then be expected to carry on and do his duty as if nothing had happened at all

[He did wonder, however, if perhaps Mrs. Hudson blamed him just a little bit, for what had happened.]

Ridiculously, he felt obligated to set the record straight in defence of his friend even now, even though it was only in his own mind, and what the hell did it matter anyway? But the truth mattered regardless of who was alive or dead. And the truth on that night was that moments after Mrs. Hudson made her statement, John’s phone beeped with a text and on the screen was a sharply worded summons to the crime scene. Apparently, Sherlock had just assumed that when he flew out of the flat and down the stairs his ineffably stupid blogger would have followed automatically, despite the recent insults. Turned out that it wasn’t until he was sitting in a cab racing towards Basingstoke that he realised he was alone in the back seat.

If he had been so inclined, John could have yanked out his phone and read the text even now. He snorted. //Yes, got the whole pathetic thing down perfectly, thought that was already a settled issue. Repetition is boring.// 

There was no need to read the text.

JOHN?  
WHY AREN’T YOU HERE?  
THOUGHT YOU WERE RIGHT BEHIND ME?  
JOHN?

John fingered the door key that always rested in his pocket, despite the fact that he never came here anymore and never intended to.

Though he had not responded to any of bloody Mycroft’s bloody notes over the months, he did remember the ones he’d actually read before ripping them into pieces and flushing them away. Every time he’d done that, consigned Mycroft’s poisonous overtures to the London sewer system, he couldn’t help smiling in response to the delighted smirk that his action would have brought to Sherlock’s face.

And yes, thank you very much, as already noted, he was entirely aware of what a sorry figure he had become, an object of scorn and pity to all who knew him and probably even everyone who simply passed him on the street. He knew and simply did not care.

After all, once he’d been a soldier and done good things for Queen and Country, so he figured that now he could become whatever he damned well wanted to. What else had he been fighting for?

One of the few notes from Mycroft that he’d actually read and remembered concerned 221B.

Actually it was the last note he’d read, because it was so spectacularly stupid that he saw no need to subject himself to the like again.

John,

I am continuing to pay Mrs. Hudson the rent for  
221B, as it is still filled with Sherlock’s things.  
Perhaps at some point one of us will want to go  
through them. Or it is possible that you might  
decide to move back in. I know that Mrs. Hudson  
would be delighted.

Move back in?

John had actually laughed aloud when he’d read that. It was the first time he’d laughed in two months and seventeen days. [And twelve hours, ah, six minutes, and some seconds, he did not add officially, although the numbers did flicker through his mind.] He had not laughed since. It made him a little sad to think that he might never laugh again. Although since he’d always tried to be a silver linings kind of guy, John took a certain pleasure in the fact that what might have been [probably was] the last laugh ever to come from him had been aimed at Mycroft.  
Still a loser, John, he told himself wearily. Hatefully.

Could the supposedly brilliant Mycroft Holmes actually picture such a thing happening? Just how was that supposed to go, exactly, in the pompous bastard’s evil little mind?

His lips twitched just a bit at the phrase, because it would have earned him another grin from the evil bastard’s much more brilliant brother.

Was there anything beyond pathetic? Because if there was, he was getting close.

All of this foolishness, of course, was really only a way to keep from thinking about other things. Such as how much he did not want to enter this place. His mind searched for an analogy.

He had once fancied himself a writer, you see, and so hidden at the bottom of a box somewhere was a copy of a book cheerfully entitled WRITING A MYSTERY. In it, he learned about analogies . And metaphors. All of which had led to several blog posts that had been somewhat too metaphorical and overly analogical. Which, of course, then led to several more-pointed-than-usual comments from Himself. Regretfully, he could not now remember if there was a chapter in the book about how to craft a happy ending, which might have come in very useful. In those damned Circumstances already mentioned. Also at the bottom of the box, which had once apparently held packets of roast lamb flavoured crisps bound for Tesco’s, were all the other good dreams he had ever had. The bad ones were still hanging about, unfortunately, which seemed a bit unfair.

Still, John had once been considered an optimist, a trait that some found endearing. Like Mrs. Hudson, who had often chirped about his cheerful demeanor even in the face of, well, Sherlock’s impossible nature. So, optimistically, he now thought, if it weren’t for my bad dreams, I’d have no dreams at all.

Even Mrs. Hudson might have found that a bit too bloody happy-clappy.

So. His mind kept going off on these tangents. He’d been searching for an analogy to describe a man standing on the threshold of what once had been his home, afraid to enter.

No, not afraid, exactly. More like...ah, more like a novitiate in some cult or religion, [redundant, he could hear Sherlock say], standing at the portal of a shrine and feeling unworthy to enter.

Well, maybe it was a good thing that book on writing was buried at the bottom of a crisp box that also held his dog tags, some photographs [one of his parents, one of him and Harry as children, one of his medical team standing in front of the field hospital, two of him with Sherlock, and four of Sherlock alone], a Union flag pillow and an ashtray from Buckingham Palace. Sometimes he would take the pillow and the ashtray out and set them in his new flat, but it never seemed right somehow and before long back into the box they would go. On days when he was being the Soldier, he acknowledged that maybe the in and out process was really just an excuse to look at photographs.

//Move back in?//

So just think about that for a moment, which Mycroft obviously had not done. Was he supposed to have his morning cuppa at their damned dining-cum-dissection table? The table which had been the site of so many horrible things [well, dissections], not to mention chemical spills, occasional explosions, and no doubt even worse things done in the middle of the night, while an oblivious but not yet disastrously failed colleague slept the sleep of the innocent. Or the stupid.

It was even more impossible to imagine sitting again at that same table where life had been fine. All fine.

Toast for breakfast while Sherlock devoured a pile of newspapers, providing a running and biting commentary on the idiocy of the human species. An especially good morning would be one where he kindly exempted his companion from the ordinary rabble and let him share in feeling the scorn.

Countless post-case late night Indian takeaways, when the conversation meandered in a way that the razor sharp Holmes mind rarely indulged itself. The genuine laughter and just occasionally a shared confidence that had nothing to do with a case.

Like the fact that Sherlock bloody Holmes harboured a secret wish to retire one day to a quiet cottage in the country and raise bees. He apparently thought that bees were a fascinating species. And he was very fond of honey.

On that night, he had apparently been fascinated by a remaining piece of garlic naan, turning it over and over in his fingers, as he said, “Any plans for your retirement, John?”

“Don’t know about bees,” John had replied, bemused. “But I do like country cottages. And honey.”  
Sherlock flicked a corner of his mouth into something like a smile and changed the subject.

John rested his forehead against the front door.

That was what the world at large, even those in a closer orbit than most, did not understand. Probably could not understand. They all thought he missed the excitement, the chases, the danger. And he did, god yes, he did.

But even more he missed all those moments at the dissection-cum-dining table. Those were the memories that ripped his soul to shreds and scattered the pieces to the wind.

Still leaning against the door, he blinked rapidly.

So Mycroft thought he could sit at that table and pretend that life went on?

Stupid, stupid Mycroft. How could a man that ignorant actually run the government? [Although that would, in fact, explain a lot.]

He didn’t want to be here.

Why, in that case, was he inserting the key into the lock, opening the door and stepping into the front hall of 221B Baker Street?

He tried to ignore the laughing ghosts that lingered just inside, but couldn’t help pausing for just a moment.

//“That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done.”  
“And you invaded Afghanistan.”//

Keep moving, he told himself. Don’t engage with those phantasms. Let them keep their innocence for as long as possible.

Something was urging him on, pulling him up the steps, something he did not understand, but could not resist. Perhaps he had finally dropped completely off that edge separating the sane from the mad.

Probably nobody else would even notice so it was all fine.

Slowly, holding his breath, he pushed the door open. He silently counted to ten and then for the first time in six months [twenty-three days, etc. bloody etc.] John Watson stepped into his home. His home. All the breath in his lungs escaped in a soft whoosh.

It took a moment before he realised that there was a fire burning. He moved further into the room, remembering the first time he’d seen 221B. The memory was as fresh as yesterday. Well, fresher, really, because yesterday had been just another in an endless vista of chilly grey sameness and that other day was a vivid image in his mind. Nothing grey, nothing chilly in the memory. It was all bright colours and exploding stars.

But he was also wondering why there was a fire in an empty flat.

Then, only then, did he see the profile, unmistakable, of the man sitting there, hands pyramided in front of his face.

John’s lips moved, but no sound emerged from his tight throat. He tried again and this time a hoarse whisper that did not belong to him emerged. “Sherlock?”

“Hello, John,” the well remembered, impossible to mistake voice said.

Once, before Afghanistan, John had lost a football wager with a bloke he knew in a parachute regiment. After two [rather hasty, in his opinion] lessons, John jumped out of a plane over a field in Kent. He remembered how that plunge had felt, although he tried not to think about it anymore, because, well, because.

He felt the same way now as he dropped-dropped-dropped forever and landed on his knees. “Sherlock,” he whispered again and all the pain of the past six months [twenty-nine...stop it, he ordered himself] was encapsulated into the single word. “How…how..?” He cursed his tiny little mind that couldn’t seem to come up with the words he needed right then.

“It was all a trick, John,” Sherlock said.

//Sherlock said?//

A trick?

A bloody trick had kept him in hell for so long?

John’s body shook uncontrollably, as if chilled, just as it had the time he was locked in a meat freezer and it took Sherlock much too long to get him out. Almost too long.

He had to get closer. Whether he would wrap both arms around his friend and hold on tightly, just as Sherlock had done when he’d emerged from the freezer, warming him until the medics arrived with a shock blanket, or pummel the great detective into a bloody pulp remained to be seen. All John knew was that he had to get closer, had to touch, had to know that his friend was here with him again. This was the miracle that he had begged for at the grave so many times.

Carefully, on still trembling and apparently boneless legs, he stood. Carefully he took one step and then one more, approaching the chair where his once-dead best friend was sitting.

Sherlock just watched.

One of John’s hands stretched out, just as it had on that terrible day, reaching, reaching.

Closer, closer.

Sherlock smiled at him, but it wasn’t his real smile. No, this was the phony grimace-as-smile that he showed to the rest of the world so often, but never to John, not since the day they first met in the lab. John couldn’t understand why Sherlock was using that smile on him. Not him. Not now.

John was almost close enough to touch.

“Oh, John,” Sherlock said in a slightly mocking tone. “It’s all just a magic trick.”

The smirk flashed again and then he was gone. Vanished. The fire went out and the room was dark and cold and not home anymore.

John’s desperate hand clutched only air, just as it had at Barts. “No,” he gasped brokenly. “No, please…”

 

“NO!”

John woke himself with the shout, his sweat-drenched body trembling, his eyes over-flowing.

The same dream. The same damn dream every night, unless he was too full of whiskey to dream at all. That was why he drank, not as popular opinion held [and as had been frequently expressed to him back when people still tried talking to him] to forget.

Forget?

They seriously thought he wanted to forget?

Sherlock was right. People were idiots.

He only drank at night, never during the working day, and he was proud of that. The alcohol sometimes helped him sleep without the dream.

During the day, stone cold sober, he remembered.

John wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, trying to get his breathing back to normal. He dragged one hand across his face, digging the heel into both eyes almost viciously, as if trying to wipe the dream from his mind.

He could not be expected to bear this much longer.

He really couldn’t.

After a couple more minutes, John straightened and then squared his shoulders. He had a duty to perform, dammit, and he was going to complete the mission. Then the dream would stop; it would all stop.

Finally he stood and, dragging the blanket along, went into the other room, where he collapsed onto the settee. Happily, because he always bought a second bottle and stashed it somewhere convenient, there was already a glass and a newly opened supply of whiskey at hand. John congratulated himself on his brilliant foresight.

“See,” he told the skull. “I can be clever, too.”

The skull, quite correctly, looked skeptical.

“You’re right, of course,” John conceded. “But I do the best I can with what I have.” He took a careful swallow. “Actually, you see, I’m more a reflector of light, a prism, if you will. I allow the genius to shine.” He narrowed his eyes at the skull. “You don’t give off a lot of light for me to reflect, do you?”

At that point, he stopped talking to the hunk of bone, afraid that it might answer back.

After two more swallows of the whiskey, he stretched out and closed his eyes again, hoping that the alcohol would hold up its end of the bargain. Let him sleep.

Perchance not to dream.

#


	4. I Have Been One Acquainted With The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is a creature of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you are enjoying this. BTW, I can't get it to show the right chapter count--this is not 4 of ?. As I said at the beginning, it is 4 of 11.

I have walked out in rain and back in rain.  
I have out-walked the furthest city light.  
I have looked down the saddest city lane.  
I have passed by the Watchman on his beat  
and dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

=Robert Frost

1

Sherlock knew each street, alley and mews in London and it was beginning to feel as if he had walked every one of them since his return to the city two—well, three now, really—days ago. Although it was a strange thought for him to have, it almost seemed as if he were reacquainting himself with the body of an old lover. The city might not have been his first love or even his greatest—the violin and the solving of puzzles had to top the very short list of things that mattered most to Sherlock Holmes—but still London was probably the third great passion of his life. But lately he had been considering the possibility that the whole order of things was entirely disordered. The edges had become so frayed that the center no longer held.

It was very late now [or very early] and he was so tired, beyond tired really, just so absolutely bone weary, that he even allowed himself to wonder about where on that list anything [anyone?] that lived and breathed and could just possibly return his regard with a portion of the same might rank. So perhaps there were more things on that damned list than he had always thought.

//Stop being ridiculous.

But I’m drunk.//

[Although he wasn’t, really.]

// I’m exhausted.//

[True.]

//I’m alone on these empty streets.//

[There had been so many empty streets. And he had been alone on every one of them.]

//I should be allowed a little melancholy just like everybody else.// 

[Absurd sentimentality and he could not give a bloody damn.]

Because in a world filled with dirges and tacky love songs where was it written that only Sherlock Holmes, of every being on the planet, must be excluded from feeling a certain amount of heartsickness?

On second thought, maybe he was a little drunk.

For several hours after leaving Mycroft’s [and why had he gone there in the first place? The answer to that question was painfully clear, but he chose not to dwell upon it at the moment], he just walked through the London night, not knowing or caring where he went.

Well, he decided not to dwell on that question. His mind, however, seemed to be moving along quite independently of his generally powerful will. How, his brain queried, had he expected the visit with his dreadful brother to go? Or, different question, more complicated and absolutely terrifying question: how had he actually wanted it to go?

//“Oh, Dr. Watson is doing fine, Sherlock. What did you expect? For him to wither up and die because you chose to jump off a building? Of course, he was sad. He thought of you as a friend and it was a terrible thing to witness. But he went back to work. Back to socializing; his life became quite normal for a change. Rumour has it that he might even be engaged to be married. Yes, John Watson is doing just fine without you.”//

Would he have been happy to hear those words from Mycroft? He was cognizant enough of social convention [although he rarely heeded it] to know that such a report should have made him glad for John.

But he was also self-aware enough, painfully self-aware in fact, to realise that his pleasure would have been mixed with something else. With that “something else” predominating over any gladness, his ruthless honesty insisted. After all this time, months when he had been slowly, slowly, shredded from the inside out, he did not want to be alone in his misery.

Sherlock Holmes had never denied being a complete and utter bastard. Far from it, in fact; he had worn the title like a badge of honour. So now he wasted no time feeling guilty about the fact that he had not wanted to hear that his death would make so little difference to his only friend.

Not that he wanted his friend to suffer any terrible anguish. Not anguish, exactly.

And he most definitely, with every particle of his being, did not want John to shove that bloody gun into his mouth and pull the trigger.

Even thinking about that possibility now made his gut clench and sent a shiver through his core. Well, through his heart, if he were going to continue the policy of not lying to himself. And that was so even if he realised fully that the heart, as an organ, played absolutely no part in human emotion. Despite all those aforementioned ridiculous songs that seemed convinced the human heart could feel things, Sherlock was a scientist and knew better.

When he wasn’t drunk and exhausted and rather lonely he knew better anyway.

So. To sum up: He had always wanted John to be happy. Probably that had been true from the first moment in Bart’s lab. He wanted, for reasons that he never cared to elucidate even to himself, to make that sad, limping ex-soldier not be so sad anymore. Why else take him jumping over rooftops? It stood to reason, then, that he wanted to return from his dreadful odyssey and discover that John was fine. But not too fine. He didn’t want the other man to be living in torment, a condition with which he himself was so intimately familiar and which he would not wish on anyone, at least no one still walking the earth, and absolutely not on his best friend who had done nothing to deserve it.

At the same time, he wanted John to have noticed an absence in his universe. It did not seem unduly dreadful for a man to hope that he would be missed if he were suddenly just Gone. Wasn’t everyone entitled to that much anyway? At least from one person? Especially if that one person was his best friend?

So, in the end, what did he want?

No bloody idea.

Except.

Except what Mycroft, the bastard he called brother, had managed to manipulate him into saying earlier. [And just by the way, shouldn’t it be illegal or malfeasance or something for master interrogators working for the government or running the government in fact, to use their dark skills on innocent bystanders? Especially those to whom they were unfortunately related?]

He wanted what he’d had.

If he could wish on a star, blow out the freaking candles on a birthday cake, open a bottle and find a bloody genie inside, if there were actually a benevolent being in the sky above who cared to grant answers to the pitiful prayers of mankind, there was only one thing Sherlock Holmes, former genius consulting detective, late of 221B Baker Street, would ask for.

Just to have again what had once been his.

Sherlock fully understood that perhaps the fates would not be exactly eager to grant this simple wish to a man who had not more fully appreciated the life he’d been living before. Or, at least, who had not appeared to appreciate it. Because, whatever the rest of the world thought, he had. He really had. Otherwise, why would he have thrown himself off a building in a desperate attempt to save it all?

The irony was, that by so dramatically illustrating how much he cared about that life, chances were he would never have it again.

As a rule, Sherlock Holmes was not fond of irony. Never had been, as it never seemed to favor him much.

It was all Mycroft’s fault for making him admit aloud what he wanted. Needed.

“Bloody Mycroft,” he said to John. There was no real heat in the words; he was just too exhausted.

There was no real response either, of course, just as there had been no real response to any of the words he had voiced to John Watson over the past six months. And thirty days. [Thirteen hours, eleven minutes, and some seconds.] The timekeeping was involuntary and damned annoying.

But talking to his former flatmate was a habit he couldn’t seem to break. And why should he, anyway? No harm was done to anyone. Sentiment had nothing to do with it, of course. Talking aloud, whether to the skull as in the old days, or to John since the beginning of their friendship, always helped to crystallise his thoughts. It never seemed to matter much whether or not John was actually in the room. So he saw no reason to stop those conversations simply because circumstances had ripped him a continent or two away from the other man.

That those circumstances were of his own design did not make them any less hateful. The reverse, in fact.

The conversations always helped. At least one of the recently deceased assassins [in point of fact, the last one, the fool who had been at Barts, who’d held a high-powered rifle pointed directly at John Watson’s head] owed his demise to Sherlock’s conversation with his absent friend. Well, not the demise itself, of course, that was pre-ordained at the moment he agreed to target the most emphatically wrong person in the world. More the exact manner of that death.

//“Shall I break his fingers one by one, John?”  
“That would be very nice, Sherlock.”  
“Smash both kneecaps?”  
“An excellent idea.”//

Admittedly, John, being a moral man and a doctor, had demurred just a bit at acid being slowly, drop by drop, applied to the bastard’s flesh. Especially the part where the drops spelled out two words. But when Sherlock quite reasonably pointed out that this was really for him, not for John, the kind doctor only said, //“Bit not good, Sherlock, but do it anyway if you really must.”//

The only bit not good thing in Sherlock’s opinion was a certain amount of disappointment over the lack of anything more interesting than common battery acid for the purpose. He would have preferred something more exotic. But needs must. And the ordinary solution certainly did the job.

So when the former killer finally stopped the whimpering, the cursing, and the begging and went with a loud splash into the Volga, it was with John Watson’s name burned into his skin. By the time he was pulled out of the river, none of the local authorities bothered trying to decipher the strange markings on his chest. [It was only a high-ranking British government official using an extremely precise digital image who read the name and who was not sure whether to be horrified by the brutality or rather proud of his little brother’s creative touch. He had finally decided to just disregard both the horror and the pride and made sure the image vanished into the ether never to be seen again. Except by him, of course, should it ever prove necessary.]

When Sherlock realised that he was actually falling asleep as he walked, he gave up and headed for the one [undeserved] star B&B in Paddington.

Once in his closet of a room, with the desk chair propped against the door [recently acquired habits persisted], Sherlock kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the narrow bed, propping himself against the definitely unstable headboard with the inadequate pillow. It was far from the worst sleeping arrangement he’d had over the last months.

Not that he expected to sleep, of course, despite the exhaustion that had almost caused him to collapse on the pavement minutes before. Never a big fan of Morpheus, these days he was even less fond of closing his eyes and letting oblivion overtake him. Not even on those nights when he would have sold whatever passed for a Holmesian soul to be bloody oblivious for just a little while.

It simply wasn’t safe to sleep. Dangers, both external and internal, could too easily swoop in and do terrible things to a sleeping man.

He retrieved his new I-pad from under the mattress and turned it on. There was already one email, from Mycroft, naturally, which he ignored, also naturally. By morning no doubt his brother would also have the number of his new mobile and be sending texts, no matter how much he hated the things, because he thought Sherlock would not ignore them. Mycroft would be surprised to know the things his little brother had learned to ignore.

Sherlock went directly to John’s blog. He needed to read again all the posts since the debacle at Bart’s.

Debacle was certainly one word for what had happened.

In his own mind, Sherlock usually called it THE TRAGEDY. That was how he visualized it. All white upper-case letters that floated by, taunting him at odd moments.

The specific word was not chosen because of the supposed death of the world’s only consulting detective. That was not even a blip in the grand scheme of things.

Truthfully, he thought Tragedy was the correct word only because there was so much sadness connected with that day.

Stupid, stupid sadness.

Sherlock knew that there had to be a lot of it around, because discerning Emotion in others [or even in himself, perhaps especially in himself] was not a particular talent of his. So if even he was painfully aware of the unhappiness it had to be practically visible in the air.

He did sometimes wonder if he might be losing his mind.

Then he straightened his shoulders in an unconscious [he told himself] imitation of a soldier.

“Well, John,” he said, “let’s see what nonsense you have been up to in my absence. And this time I promise to read much more carefully.”

“Thank you,” John didn’t really say. But Sherlock heard the words anyway.

//He was my best friend and I will always believe in him.//

 

2

There were many within the corridors of power at Whitehall who would have sworn sincerely that Mycroft Holmes never left the confines of his office there. Save, of course, for his not infrequent retreats to the myriad [and blessedly silent] pleasures of the Diogenes Club.

Part of their reasoning was based simply on the fact of just how many pies bore the unmistakable fingerprints of the elder Holmes brother. The only Holmes brother now, most but not all, of the grey figures that populated bureaucracy still believed. And since the other Holmes brother was not available [due to the being dead thing], no one made a rude quip concerning Mycroft and pie.

What no one [save Anthea, it went without saying. Ever.] knew was that Mycroft did actually go home most nights. He was actually very fond of his home, not least of all, because of the fake wall in his library, which concealed another office. It was a small, but delightful enclave equipped with the very latest technological advances, some of which were not even in use at Whitehall yet. [Another fact that went without saying. To anyone. Well, excepting the usual.]

Even though it was now very late, Mycroft was still sitting in his secret lair, sipping brandy, occasionally glancing at the next day’s headlines [or even what would be the headlines two days hence], but mostly frowning at the split screen of his computer.

The particular program in use at the moment was extremely specialized to suit his needs. He was completely untroubled by the fact that those needs currently were not at all related to running the country [world], but with a more personal mission. Such deviations from strict protocol were, in his opinion, a quite justified perk of a job that was likely to put him in an early grave. Before that dismal end, he would do what he could to ease his own path and the paths of those [very few] people for whom he felt responsible. Like his brother. And, by extension, John Watson.

He was aware that Sherlock had not replied to the email he’d sent. No surprise there, of course, but it was mildly irritating to realise that he hadn’t even opened the bloody thing.

It also should not have come as any surprise that his brother, even newly resurrected, was as annoying as ever. 

The real purpose of this exercise was to see what John was up to. Mycroft had kept a close watch on the other man for six months, of course. He had no intention of having to be the one to tell Sherlock that Doctor Watson had put a bullet through his own tormented brain. That would be the kind of very unpleasant conversation that Mycroft spent much of his life avoiding. The kind of conversation, he feared, that might well lead to another leap from some tall building, but with no plan to survive this time. He wouldn’t put it past his brother; such a gesture would, after all, be the ultimate “bugger you” to the world. Most especially to Mycroft.

But John was not online, so Mycroft switched to the view of the room and saw a figure curled into a protective fetal position on the battered settee. It seemed as if John had imbibed his usual alcohol [not an excessive amount, Mycroft was well aware] and gone to sleep. Actually, Mycroft was glad about the drink, because it was extraordinarily difficult to watch someone in the throes of a dreadful nightmare. He’d watched too many of those over the months. The images were compartmentalized, of course, although he had nothing as grandiose as a Palace inside his head. Just his mind. Even in that mind, however, the words a tortured man shouted into the darkness were not quite so easily set aside.

Ahh, now Sherlock was online. Still not interested in any email. But at least he was finally reading John’s blog again, which was a good thing. Mycroft knew that this time he would not simply skim the words, but would perceive the subtext. And that should be enough to force him into action.

Nevertheless, it was increasingly clear that he himself was not yet done with this little affair. It was not enough, apparently, that he had to run the government, try to deal with the Americans, handle yet another Korean situation. Whilst continuously trying to keep the planet from an existential crisis.

No, he also had to negotiate his way through the landmine-littered terrain that constituted Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson while trying to emerge at the other side with no dead bodies or shattered psyches to deal with.

It was enough to make even the most competent man feel rather weary.  
#


	5. An Element Of Blank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three men trying to navigate life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you are finding this entertaining.

Pain has an Element of Blank.  
It cannot recollect Where it begun---  
or if there were a time when it was not.

Emily Dickenson

1

John Watson was not by nature a man very kindly disposed towards epiphanies. In his own life he generally recognized three such significant moments. Most people apparently believed epiphanies to be illuminating and, therefore, good things. After all, was not light better than darkness? Knowledge better than ignorance?

However, not for the first time, what most people believed turned out to be very, very wrong.

Of his three epiphanies, although all were illuminating, only one could ever be considered Good. The other two shone light, yes, and what that light revealed to him was horrible. Not fine in any way.

EPIPHANY #1: I am going to die.

Plenty of light provided by the blazing desert sun for this particular flash of realisation. He watched his own blood slowly seep into the sand, wondering if his final moments were really improved by the brightly lit knowledge that these agonising minutes would be his last on earth.

He did regret that it was all ending much too soon. At least it seemed too soon to him. There was still so much he wanted to experience in life. Since there was nothing much else he could do at the moment [dying seemed to require very little from him. Except to keep bleeding.], John let his mind drift over some of his unrealized dreams.

Family things, for example. He had hoped to mend the relationship with his sister, the only family he had left. If she ever got her shit together with the booze they might be able to create something…family like. He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh if not for the pain and the taste of blood in his mouth. How many times had he warned Harry that she was headed for an early grave? And now here he was. So who actually had the death wish? A helpless, hopeless alcoholic or the idiot who volunteered to go to war? Maybe she would toast his memory if she ever thought about it. About him.

Also, there were professional things left undone. He’d wanted to save more lives, especially those of children, to make up for the three he couldn’t save here in the sand no matter how hard he’d tried. Lives saved for lives lost. It seemed like a good ambition to have.

Of course, there were some stupid things. Like eating a meal at the top of the Eiffel Tower for no particular reason except that it sounded like a nice way to spend an evening.

And, finally, the really stupid things that didn’t even bear thinking about. Because of some Russian movie he’d been forced into seeing years ago, before he had any idea about love or passion, John had a very secret dream of standing on a train platform in the snow, kissing the one great love of his life until they both wept with the wonder of it. Tiny snowflakes would melt on their faces and mingle with hot salty tears. Not unlike the tears rolling down his face as he lay dying in the sand of Afghanistan. He mourned the lack of snow and the lack of love.

Regrets.

But apparently epiphanies did not necessarily tell the truth. He could accept that. Well, had to really, as he did not die in Afghanistan. Although, in truth, there were times he wished he had.

And some things worked out. He’d sometimes gotten along with Harry, after he was back from the war. Before he stopped getting along with anyone anymore, because he just couldn’t. The last time he’d seen his sister she was very, very drunk and she screamed at him. //“You’re not dead, Johnny! Stop acting like you died, too. He was a lying wanker who threw himself off a building because he was too much of a coward to admit the truth. You’re better off without a so-called friend like that!”//

John didn’t yell back at her; he was proud of that fact. What would have been the point? She was, after all, drunk. He only took her arm, very gently in fact, and guided her out the door of his flat. “Goodbye,” he said oh-so-quietly and closed the door, also quietly. He no longer called her, no longer answered when she called him.

After she was gone, he sat on the floor for the rest of the night and remembered everything, starting with the moment he’d walked into the lab at Barts to meet Sherlock Holmes and ending with his fingers clutching a bloody wrist in a desperate search for a pulse. No tears, no anger, no emotion at all in fact. Just an accounting of every moment.  
Moving on. Back to those dreams. John had indeed saved the lives of more children. Not those suffering from IEDs or bullets, of course, but a child dead from anaphylactic shock or undiagnosed meningitis was just as dead as one caught in the middle of a stupid, pointless war. He could be proud of that.

Amazingly, there was even a dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower to look back on. At the time, he could not even remember ever mentioning that particular dream to Sherlock. Why would he have? But he must have done, because after chasing the forger through the alleys of Paris, catching him [of course] and turning him over to the gendarmes, who incidentally did not seem quite as grateful as they might have been, even after Sherlock spoke to them in flawless French, the detective had glanced at him. “Hungry?” he’d asked in the same soft tone as he had used after the cabby shooting.

“Starving.”

“Dinner at the Eiffel Tower?” 

It was an amazing meal and even Sherlock ate more than usual, which was probably down to the fact that the whole thing was going onto Mycroft’s credit card. Which fact definitely explained the horribly expensive bottle of champagne. In his mind [and only his mind!] John called it a date. Well, to him, two people sitting in the sky over Paris, sharing a bottle of champagne, and having fun was obviously a date. Sherlock could think whatever he wanted. 

EPIPHANY #2: This man will change my life.

He was standing in the doorway of 221B Baker Street at that moment, holding the damned forgotten cane in his hand and watching a brilliant madman grin at him. The light this time was not that of the brutal Afghan sun, but instead some sort of golden haze that he could not have explained if anyone had asked him to. It was all good, though, and it was true.

John Watson was an ordinary man, who could not lay claim to anything as grandiose as a Mind Palace, of course, but he did have a cozy corner in his quite common mind where he could put the moments he did not want to ever forget. The last time he spoke to his mother. The first time he used his own hands and his own skill to restart a human heart. The feel on his tongue of the bubbles in that so-expensive Paris champagne. And standing in the doorway of 221B, bathed in that golden light, watching his new friend smile at him.

Unfortunately, there was no train platform in the snow to look back upon, and now there never would be, because how could a man with a shattered heart ever love that much or stand in a place like that and weep from pure joy? There was no way the universe would permit something like that.

EPIPHANY #3: Sherlock Holmes is going to jump off that roof. And die.

True. And true.

But this epiphany, full of truth as it was, brought only one moment of light, of shocking whiteness behind John’s eyes, just as Sherlock tipped over the edge and then all that remained was darkness of the blackest, most unrelenting sort.

So. Three epiphanies for John Watson.

At least until this morning.

Now there were four.

The morning began when he rolled over on the settee and saw with slightly blurry vision the large manila envelope that had been set just inside his door. A door that had been securely locked, so the envelope obviously came from that bastard Mycroft. He thought about just ignoring it, since it was obviously too large to flush away, but after a moment he pushed himself to his feet and went to pick it up.

There were over a hundred pages inside, but all he really needed to know was in the summary on page number one. When he read what was there—and then read it again, because his mind could not absorb it the first time—John Watson felt the room spin for several moments. He closed his eyes, took several strangled breaths, and read the words one more time.

//A recently completed and very intensive investigation by several agencies of the British government as well as Interpol, has concluded that everything alleged by once-disgraced [and now deceased] consulting detective Sherlock Holmes regarding James Moriarty was, in fact, the truth. Because of the sensitive nature of much of the material in the report it has been decided that it cannot be released to the general public at this time.//

John clutched the paper in fingers that trembled just a little. “Sherlock,” he whispered.

It was a moment before he noticed a short hand-written message at the bottom of the page. The handwriting was Mycroft’s. 

//John, the government will not release this, despite my best efforts in that regard. It seems to be the general opinion that since both principals are deceased, there is no urgent need for this information to be made public. I most fervently disagree and know that you will as well. They can only hope that no interested blogger will get the truth out. I am convinced that the man who always believed, who continues to believe, should have that honour. This rather changes the world and I hope it will help you to heal. The future will be better. Trust me, John.//

John snorted softly. Trust Mycroft? Not bloody likely to happen in this lifetime.

But he had done this and John was grateful.

And it was then that John saw the light one more time. 

EPIPHANY #4: All I have to do is tell the world the whole story of why Sherlock jumped and the truth about Moriarty and then I can be done with all of this.

True. And all fine. So very fine.

It was as if a great pressure had been lifted from his chest and he could finally breathe again.

So it was with a new sense of purpose that [Captain] John Watson carefully set the papers aside to be read later and stood. His first thought [after Bloody hell, I need tea.] was that it was time, past time, in fact, to become again the man he had once been. Standards had been allowed to decline unacceptably. Sherlock, when he jumped and died a hero, had not been some pathetic, slightly hung-over shadow of himself. Neither should his friend be, as he worked to set the record straight at last.

After a cup of hot, extra sweet English Breakfast, John began the process of making himself again the man he had been when he was in the company of Sherlock Holmes. The man Sherlock had made from the wreck of an army doctor he’d rescued.

First, a long hot shower followed by a really good shave. His hair could have done with a trim, but he was actually rather fond of the slightly shaggy look, if only because he could imagine the eye-rolling that once would have ensued at the sight. He added just a little product.

He dressed carefully in pressed khakis [how long had they been hanging in the wardrobe?] and a clean white teeshirt. Socks, but no shoes at the moment.

While the kettle was heating again, John stood at the desk and searched through the drawer until his fingers clasped a once-familiar chain. He pulled his dog tags out and dropped them around his neck, patting them as they rested against the shirt.

Now he was prepared to do battle.

He made another cup of tea and carried it to the desk. As he passed the window, he reached out to give the coat hanging there a swift pat. He couldn’t help the small smile that touched his lips. He sat at the computer and called up his blog.

John Watson had a fourth epiphany in his life. It came with a light that was a soft golden haze, and it felt right.

2

No one at all would spare even a drop of pity for the man running the British Government had he complained about having a really bad, horrible, not very nice morning. Given that reality, Mycroft did not bother voicing his unhappiness to anyone. Save, of course, Anthea, to whom he issued a Man-in-Charge-of-the-Whole-Flipping-World unhappy frown.

She ran a mental checklist. “Korea?”

He shook his head.

“Afghanistan?”

Another negative.

Her lips pursed. “Oh. Your brother and…”

“Dr. John Watson,” he reminded her yet again.

She nodded. “Yes, him.”

Mycroft leaned back in his chair and used one index finger to rub first his right eye and then his left. “Him, indeed. Odd, isn’t it, that such a plain beige, not to mention rather short individual could be the catalyst for so much…upheaval.”

“John Watson?” she asked in a slightly bewildered voice, which briefly amused Mycroft since bewilderment was not a state in which Anthea often found herself. “But your brother is the reason behind it all. Isn’t he?”

Mycroft gave her a small smile. “Oh. Yes, my dear, Sherlock is the reason for all the current upset within these halls. As well as the agitation being felt within several other parts of the world.”

Irate memos had piled up on his desk. No one cared about the dead bodies being strewn across the landscape in several different countries. The bodies all belonged to very bad people and the world was a better place without each and every one of them. It was just the idea of a solitary angel of destruction roaming the planet, striking wherever and whenever he wanted that unsettled people.

“But?”

A faint sigh escaped Mycroft’s lips. Somewhere, a butterfly probably fell to earth. “Sherlock is the reason, but John Watson is the cause.”

He leaned back a bit so that she could see the monitor showing the interior of Watson’s flat. The man himself was standing in the middle of his parlour, if that word could be used to describe the dismal space.

Anthea observed for just a moment. “He looks…fine,” she said hesitantly.

“Oh, yes, fine.” Mycroft watched the image for a beat. “He is clean and shaven and wearing neatly pressed clothing. John also has a look of stern determination on his face. Stern, I note, not grim. He is not feeling grim at the moment.” That index finger lifted again, this time to touch the screen. “And his army dog tags are around his neck.”

She was not quite seeing it yet, but she knew Mycroft was not happy. “All of this is not good because?” 

He gave her a flicker of approval. It was actually more important that she should read his mood than see the actual evidence on the screen. [It floated through one part of his mind that perhaps that same talent was one reason the Sherlock-John dynamic worked---used to work---so well. John might not have been able to deduce the evidence expertly, but one thing he could do was read Sherlock and respond correctly. Mycroft could only imagine how his brother had felt about that, after a lifetime of no one, save his despised older brother and one elderly grandmother, being able to understand him. It was no wonder the last months had been so damnably difficult for Sherlock.]   
He kept all of that to himself, not saying anything, and then something began to clear in Anthea’s gaze. “Oh,” was all she said.

“Yes,” Mycroft said. “To me, that looks like a man filled with a new sense of resolve. A new determination to complete the mission he has set for himself. I gave him the data to do so. An action I hope I do not come to regret, but it seemed necessary. And then he will be done.”

She nodded, full understanding now in her face. “Done. I see. What are you going to do?”

“I shouldn’t have to do anything.” His tone was just short of petulance. “My brother should be handling this.”

“Why isn’t he?”

Mycroft smoothed his already smooth hair. “Oh, because he’s an annoying git.” It was hard to say which one of them was more startled by his unexpected descent into the vernacular. They both ignored it. “He is afraid,” Mycroft said flatly. “The very same man who has just crisscrossed the world alone, slaying the monsters with icy efficiency, avenging the wrongs done to him and those he cares about, is afraid to confront that same beige, shortish individual and tell him the truth. A truth, incidentally, for which John Watson has begged the universe every night for the past almost seven months. It would be farcical if not for the fact that it is only one step away from being tragic.”

Anthea was silent for a moment, still staring at the screen as John walked by the window, reaching out as he passed to run his fingertips over the collar of the coat hanging there, and then settled himself at the desk. Despite what some thought, she was not merely decorative, which she proved yet again when she spoke. “The doctor cannot be allowed to…harm himself,” she murmured. “Not if your brother is to function in any meaningful way.” She seemed to think back over what she knew of Sherlock. “Or even to continue at all.”

Mycroft sighed. “Exactly, my dear, exactly.”

He began a text to Sherlock. When that was finished, he downloaded a copy of the very secret program to the new I-pad. 

Anthea reached for her Blackberry. “Sir, shall I alert the operative overseeing the doctor’s security to be ready to move on the flat instantly, should the need arise?”

“As usual, you anticipate me,” Mycroft said.  
He leaned back in the chair and continued to watch John, waiting to hear back from Sherlock. Despite his worry, he felt the small frisson of excitement that always arrived as a particularly difficult situation neared its conclusion.

3

The damned grande whatever was slowly cooling, congealing in its cardboard cup as Sherlock concentrated his considerable attention entirely on the screen in front of him. He hadn’t wanted the costly drink in the first place. Just the thought of putting anything at all into his stomach at the moment was enough to cause a slight nausea to rise in his throat. But apparently ordering and paying for the drink was the price of sitting at this slightly wobbly table and using the free wi-fi for as long as necessary.

A lesser man might have admitted, at least to himself, to feeling some stress. A lot of stress, in fact.

But not being a lesser man, the most Sherlock would concede to was being irritated. Irritated primarily that his emotions were all over the place; not that he usually admitted to even having emotions, but that seemed a foolish battle to be fighting at this particular moment. Not when he knew the truth. Not when Mycroft, of all people, also knew the truth. But irritation seemed acceptable, not to mention comfortable, so he gave that full rein.

Which was not difficult given how things were going for him at the moment. There were too many people in this place and they all seemed solely dedicated to annoying him. He glared at the woman sitting at the next table. She had smiled cheerfully at him, licking her lips lightly, flirting with him of all things. As if he would be interested. At his icy stare, she blushed a little and looked away.

Despite it all, of course, Sherlock Holmes was still a rational being, so one part of his mind recognized and even accepted the complete inevitability of his current situation. From the moment he launched himself off that roof, this was always where he was bound to end up. At least it was if he had any hope at all of getting his life back. His home on Baker Street. The Work. John at his side. [Not necessarily in that order.] The promise of those things, the only things that really mattered, had kept him going, had prevented him more than once from turning back to the needle. Or worse.

If everything blew up now, Sherlock knew exactly where he would be. It was a place he’d never wanted to see again. A very familiar hell. But he needed what he needed and, failing that, nothing else mattered.  
The most recent aggravation was that somehow Mycroft had been remotely manipulating his I-pad. Apparently not satisfied with simply sending annoying emails and texts, he was now remotely installing apps. If the great unwashed British public knew even half of what his brother got up to they would be terrified. Or in revolt. However, his immediate burst of anger vanished immediately when Sherlock became aware of what he was looking at.

He could now view John’s blog entries in real time, before they were even posted. He watched, his jaw tight, as the words appeared in front of him. Clearly, John’s typing had not improved over the months, as was obvious from the halting appearance of the words on the screen. Despite the painful slowness of the typing, there seemed to be a sense of grim determination in what was being said. For some reason Sherlock could not explain he found that determination to be rather terrifying. This was the soldier. Not the doctor. Not the blogger. Not even the friend. Seeing this John, the soldier, the warrior, was not comforting to Sherlock at the moment.

Just as he began to really read and understand the words, the image on the screen flickered a bit and then split into two parts.

His immediate response was to curse Mycroft again.

But at once he forgot that and his breath was released in a long exhalation.

All the months, all the fear, all the boredom, all the terrible things he had done---it all evaporated in an instant. None of it mattered anymore.

There on the screen was John Watson, alive and [apparently] well. He was sitting in what appeared to be the horrid little flat Mycroft had mentioned. But the surroundings mattered not at all.

//John.//

He was sitting at a tidy desk, frowning fiercely in a way that was painfully familiar as he typed. Occasionally, he would pause, thinking about what to write next. When that happened, one hand would settle on his chest, fingering the dog tags.

Sherlock frowned. He didn’t like to see John wearing the tags, because of what that said about the other man’s state of mind. Coupled with the firm set of his jaw and the determined typing, it was all adding up to one thing.

And that one thing meant that Mycroft had been all too correct in what he had said about John.  
Sherlock’s mouth was suddenly dry.

Unthinkingly, he took a swallow of the ghastly cold coffee. It made him gag.

The woman at the next table smirked.

He shot her a glance of such viciousness that she looked frightened for a moment. Then Sherlock reluctantly stopped watching John and began instead to read the words on the screen.

//I have come into possession of a secret government report that reveals the truth about Sherlock Holmes. This report makes quite clear that Sherlock was not a liar or a fool. Everything he said about that bastard Moriarty was the truth. This came as no surprise to me, of course, although it probably will to many people. Especially those in the press and at Scotland Yard.//

When the words stopped coming, Sherlock looked again at the other side of the screen. John had paused once more. There was a look of dark anger on his face. It took a long moment before he inhaled deeply and returned his fingers to the keyboard.

//Sherlock did not deserve what happened. He was a good man as well as a great one. He was my friend.  
I will be writing more, until everyone knows the full story.  
But for now I need a break.//

Sherlock watched as John pushed himself away from the desk. There was a look of such naked pain on the other man’s face that Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment.

What had he done?

At that moment, Sherlock felt as much a monster as Moriarty had been. Was there anything he could do now to repair the damage he’d caused?

He wanted to ignore the text.

WELL, BROTHER, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY NOW? MH

But he knew that Mycroft wouldn’t go away.

ABOUT WHAT, MYCROFT? SH

DON’T PLAY THE FOOL. MH  
I AM GOING TO HANDLE IT. SH

YOU WILL NOT, I HOPE, BE ‘HANDLING IT’ WHILE JOHN STANDS ON A ROOFTOP AND YOU ARE FAR BELOW ON YOUR MOBILE. MH

GO TO HELL. SH

OH, SHERLOCK, I AM ONLY TRYING TO INSURE THAT YOU DO NOT SPEND THE REST OF YOUR DAYS THERE. MH

Might be too late for that, Sherlock thought, shoving his phone away.

#


	6. Something You Somehow Haven't To Deserve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for hanging in, folks.

Home is the place where, when you  
have to go, they have to take you in.  
“I should have called it something you  
somehow haven’t to deserve.

-Robert Frost

 

1

Mycroft was not at all surprised when, barely an hour later, the door to his study opened and Sherlock strolled in, although the stroll had much less panache than usual. Of course, Mycroft was never really surprised about anything. Well, rarely. Ironically, one of those rare instances had been when he finally came to understand the strength of the unlikely relationship between his brother and John Watson. That he had for so long not comprehended the ramifications of that relationship on the situation was an unforgivable lapse. One he did not intend repeating.

Even in the short time since Sherlock’s last visit, the man’s appearance had deteriorated. The dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises, his unruly hair stuck out at various unlikely angles, and his skin was so pale as to almost seem translucent. He looked even more otherworldly than usual. Wrecked beauty, Mycroft mused.

“I expected you twenty minutes ago,” Mycroft murmured.

“Off the diet again?” Sherlock’s usual snark was somewhat undercut by the fact that he swayed a little as he stood there.

Mycroft lost his temper, which he rarely did. There had been one particularly dim American president who had driven him to such loss of control, but otherwise it was only Sherlock who could push him so far. “For god’s sake, sit down before you fall over. And is it really wise to begin by insulting the one person willing and able to help you at the moment?”

Sherlock scowled, but dropped into the other chair. Immediately, he went into the defensive position he had used since childhood, drawing both knees up to his chest and holding on tightly.

Mycroft tried not to see a sulky ten-year-old. He did not speak, knowing that this had to start with Sherlock admitting that he needed help.

Poor Sherlock. When a Holmes, any Holmes, tried to deal with ordinary emotions, they tended to be defenceless. Reverting to the behavior of an angry child was actually one of the less destructive ways of coping. Especially for a man who had most recently coped by committing acts of horrific [albeit righteous] violence.

Sherlock rested his chin on his knees and stared at the wall. It was ten minutes before he spoke. “I don’t…I do not know what to do. If I do the wrong thing it will be a disaster.”

“What would be your definition of a disaster?”

There was another long wait before Sherlock spoke. “John might do harm to himself.”

Mycroft just waited.

“John will hate me.” Sherlock spit the words out, quite obviously angry at being forced to say them.

Mycroft nodded. “Both possibilities, I suppose. Given that, what would you have me do?”

Sherlock shrugged. “You’re always the man with the answers, aren’t you?” That wasn’t quite the compliment it might have sounded like.

“I guess I have to be.”

Sherlock sighed.

Mycroft studied him. “Very well. First things first. You are going into the guest room and getting into bed.” He raised a hand as Sherlock started to protest. “Non-negotiable. You are killing yourself and I am not going to exert my efforts only to present Dr. Watson with a corpse after all. A car has already been dispatched to retrieve your belongings from that dreadful room in which you have been hiding yourself.”

“And what are you going to do in the meantime?” Sherlock asked sharply.

Now it was Mycroft who sighed. “What have I ever done, little brother? I am going to fix it.”

“It is partly your mess,” Sherlock replied in a dark tone.

“I have repeatedly acknowledged that,” Mycroft said sharply “And now I will rectify my errors. You might wish me luck. Confronting John is a dangerous task.”

The smirk was nearly that of the Sherlock from before.

“Bed, Sherlock.” Mycroft ordered in the tone that ran the British government.

Sherlock got up and took a grudging step towards the door. “I won’t be able to sleep,” he complained.

“Then just close your eyes and pretend,” Mycroft replied unsympathetically. He could remember saying those same words in precisely the same tone to an always recalcitrant little brother.

Sherlock was halfway out the door when he paused, although he didn’t look back. “Thank you,” he barely said.

Mycroft managed to restrain a snort.

He had always known, somehow, that this was what it would come down to. And in reality, he welcomed it. No one [with the usual exemption of Anthea] actually understood the depth of the guilt Mycroft Holmes had borne since the entire Moriarty fiasco.

To do what he could now for his brother and also for John Watson, the most innocent victim in all of this, would hopefully make the dark nights of his soul a little less black.

Mycroft went for his coat and brolly.

 

2

John really wanted to just ignore the knock on his door. There was absolutely no one in the world that he wanted to see. But something in the sound told him that the noisy knocker was not going to give up and there was no sense in annoying the neighbors.

Although very soon he would no longer have to worry about things like neighbors or people knocking on his door. John thought that he should have felt something more when he thought of his own death, but honestly, he didn’t. All he felt was relief, actually.

But for now: Someone was knocking.  
So John went and opened the door.

Of all of the people in the world that he did not want to see standing in the corridor, which was all of the people in the world, this one was at the top of the list.

“Fuck off, Mycroft,” he said, starting to close the door again. 

One end of a brolly was suddenly and forcefully inserted into the doorway. “John, I must speak with you.”

“No, you really---” John looked into Mycroft’s face and something he saw there made him swallow the rest of his words. He took one step back. “Come in then,” he said dully, before returning to the settee.

Mycroft did not wait to be invited before occupying the chair.

John did not relax. His spine was ramrod straight and his face inscrutable. He spoke first. “Thank you for the government report,” he said tightly. It was painfully clear that gratitude was not something he wanted to acknowledge owing to Mycroft Holmes, but he knew what was the right thing to do. And John Watson never shirked from his duty.

The only response was a careful nod.

There was a lengthy silence.

Finally Mycroft cleared his throat. “John, there is no easy way to say this. And, truthfully, I should not be the one sitting here. But I have taken on this duty out of necessity.”

John was watching him with quiet soldier eyes.

“To begin with, please believe me when I say that everything that happened was done with the best of intentions. What he did was---”

John made an impatient gesture. “I know all of this, Mycroft. Sherlock jumped to save us. To save me. I know that his intentions were good. He died to---“

“No,” Mycroft said very softly.

John paused. “What?”

Mycroft lifted a hand and smoothed his hair. “Sherlock did not die.”

The words hung in the air between them.

John closed his eyes because the room would not stop whirling. A sudden numbness spread from his chest to his limbs. It must be a dream. It had to be a dream, just like all the other dreams. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked almost querulously. “I’m very busy right now.”

“Why?” Mycroft sounded vaguely puzzled. “Well, one assumes you would want to know that Sherlock is alive. My brother…he is unsure of your reaction.” Mycroft made an uncharacteristic grimace of irritation. “Unbelievably, he is afraid to face you.”

“I see.” John nodded.

“The danger to you and the others was not over until Moriarty’s entire web was destroyed. Sherlock set out to do that.”

“I see that. Yes. He would do, wouldn’t he?”

Mycroft’s tone turned darker. “He has done terrible things in the name of good. Even I was…surprised at the lengths he went to. And now the job is done.”

“Oh, well, that is good, isn’t it?” John’s voice was flat. He had finally opened his eyes.

Mycroft was obviously uneasy. Whatever reaction he had been expecting after the announcement, it had not been this: No real reaction at all. “Sherlock is at my home now. He has been exceedingly anguished about how to tell you.”

John gave a sharp nod. “Yes, I can see how that would be difficult.” Then, abruptly, he stood. “Good of you to come. But please leave now.”

Now Mycroft, perhaps for the first time in his life, looked completely bewildered. “John, are you quite all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“You do understand what I said?”

 

“Of course.” John’s voice was still soft, but now there was an underlying and vicious anger. “I understand. Sherlock, who was supposed to be my best friend, lied to me. He sent me to hell and let me stay there for all these months. He let me…die, really, which is ironic, isn’t it?” He took a deep breath. “Sherlock lied to me.”

Mycroft shook his head. “But, John, this is the miracle you wanted. That you asked for over and over.”

“Yes,” John murmured. “Isn’t there an old saying about being careful what you wish for?” John wondered, fleetingly, if he was losing his mind. He walked over to the door and yanked it open, waiting in silence for Mycroft to leave.

Finally, Mycroft stood. “Sherlock is---”

“Tell him I am very glad that he is alive.”

“Very well. I can see you need some time to process this. Quite understandable.” Mycroft paused just before stepping out the door. “Tomorrow at 15:00, Sherlock will be at Baker Street. If you want to see him.” He stared into John’s eyes. “He certainly wants to see you.” 

John could not believe that it was desperation he was seeing on Mycroft Holmes’ face.

“He needs to see you, John.”

“I have needed to see him for a long time. He didn’t seem to care about that, did he?”

Mycroft clearly did not want to be having this conversation with John Watson. “He cares, John. To a quite frightening degree, if you must know.”

John just shrugged and Mycroft left.

The door slammed shut.

John leaned against it for a moment. Then he walked to the window, reaching automatically for the scarf hanging there. He slid it from the hook and dropped it around his neck. Suddenly, his legs gave out. He slid to the floor and huddled there.

John wished he had punched Mycroft in the face. Or thrown him out the window. He clutched the soft yarns of the scarf with something like desperation as he tried to understand a world where the dead came back.

//Sherlock.//

 

3

It came as absolutely no surprise to Mycroft when he found Sherlock not in bed as ordered, but instead back in the study, curled on the settee and staring blankly into the fire. Neither of them spoke as Mycroft entered the room, poured himself a brandy, and then sat down opposite Sherlock.

Somewhat unusually, it was Sherlock who broke the silence. “I thought…I imagined that you might bring him back with you,” he said in a soft voice.

Oh, yes, Mycroft understood that Sherlock had been lying here imagining that John would burst in through the door and greet him like the returning hero that he actually was. Who knew how far Sherlock’s imaginings had gone?

“Sadly, no,” Mycroft replied. “I fear that would have required the assistance of several strong men and probably restraining devices of some sort.” He paused, savoring the brandy. “John is very angry.”

Sherlock shifted minutely.

“Give him some time, Sherlock.” Mycroft realised that very few people in the world would recognise the gentle voice he was now using as belonging to the British Government. “I told him that you would be at Baker Street tomorrow at 15:00. If he wants to see you.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

Mycroft’s mind wandered back nearly thirty years, to a little brother wondering why his beloved Grandmere would never welcome them to the chateau in Avignon again. Would not feed them warm croissants with plum jam anymore. The little boy with the wild curls and wilder eyes did not know how he would get along without the one person in the world who seemed to understand him and, more importantly, accept him completely just as he was.

Sherlock had waited a very long time to find that kind of acceptance and understanding again. And now he had lost it for the second time. Mycroft knew his brother and he was fully aware that there would never be a third chance because if he had indeed lost his friend, Sherlock would never let anyone else into his life or his heart.

“Eventually John will want to see you, I am confident of that, Sherlock.” He was. He had to be because the options were all unacceptable.  
Now the silence stretched on for so long that Mycroft thought perhaps that Sherlock might have finally passed out from exhaustion. He stood, taking a soft and faded quilt [which had actually come from the Avignon house and under which a young Sherlock had napped many times] from the back of the chair. As he draped it over his brother, he saw that Sherlock was not sleeping at all, although his eyes were closed.

Silent tears coursed down his face.

Mycroft felt a stab of grief and guilt that he knew would last until his dying day. He had not seen genuine tears on Sherlock’s face in many years. He hated it.

But there was nothing to be said.

The future was not in his hands, despite his almost indecent amount of personal power, or in Sherlock’s hands, despite his brilliance. No, ironically, the future of them all lay only within the stalwart grasp of John Hamish Watson, late of Her Majesty’s military, healer, and the guardian of a heart not his own.

Mycroft rested a light hand fleetingly on Sherlock’s shoulder and then left him alone.

#


	7. What Fortitude The Soul Contains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock waits. John decides. Fate intervenes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not long to go now.

What fortitude the soul contains  
That it can so endure  
The accent of a coming Foot  
The opening of a door.

-Emily Dickinson

1

It did seem as if there ought to be a limit to the number of epiphanies any one man should be forced to experience in the course of his lifetime.

This was the first thought in John Watson’s mind when he awoke.

His second thought was the realization that he was stone cold sober. Which was something of a surprise in light of the fact that if ever a man would have been entirely justified in drinking himself into a paralytic stupor, he would have been that man and last night would have been the time.

But here he was, awake with the dawn [or at least only slightly after the dawn because, oddly, he had actually slept very well, with no nightmares], awake and sober as a bishop.

Not an ordinary bishop, of course, but a bishop who had somehow fallen down the rabbit hole and ended up in a universe much different than the one he’d previously occupied.

This was a universe in which Sherlock Holmes was alive and well.

So, apparently, he was now living in a Lewis Carroll world. Or, perhaps, a Monty Python world. He didn’t really know. It wasn’t clear yet whether he should actually care.

John rolled over to stare at the ceiling, which was cracked and yellowing and bore some stains that if deduced might provide a few interesting insights into previous tenants of the flat. If that were the sort of thing one did. It was not the sort of thing John Watson did, of course, although he used to know a bloke who was quite good at it.

//Sherlock is alive.//

Was he? Really?  
Maybe, John mused, I’m not quite as sober as I thought I was. Did Mycroft really turn up here and announce that Sherlock was Not Dead? That the whole jumping off a building thing was just a big joke?

Well, when it came to jokes, John Watson had to be the biggest one around, didn’t he? All these months of grief. Wasted grief. Mourning because of a lie.

But one thought kept popping into his mind.

//Sherlock is alive.//  
//Sherlock.//  
//Is.//  
//Alive.//

He didn’t know how long there had been tears on his face before he noticed them. He swiped a hand across his face almost angrily. Too many tears, wasted tears, over that bloody Not Dead man.

So now the question seemed to be, just what was he supposed to do with this new information? How was he meant to proceed? Well, to begin with, he really needed a piss. And a shower, because this seemed like the kind of a day where a man wanted---needed---to be at his best to confront whatever was going to happen next. And then he wanted a cup of very hot, very strong tea. The world always made more sense after tea, Grammy used to say and John had taken that lesson very much to heart. When things went balls up, John Watson made tea. And Sherlock Holmes drank that tea.

So, determined to take some kind of action, John moved. He went into the tiny loo, peed, showered and shaved, and for the second day in a row dressed in clean, neat clothing. A plaid shirt and some practically new trousers. Practically new only in the sense that he had hardly worn them; the purchase actually took place some months ago. Before. He no longer remembered the case that had taken Sherlock into a place he had never ventured before, namely Debenhams. He did remember the look on the detective’s face when John plucked the pair of trousers from a rack and announced his intention to buy them.

//“But, John,” Sherlock began, dismay plain in his voice.  
“I need trousers,” John replied crisply. “These will do.”  
Buying a pair of plain khaki trousers off the rack because they ‘would do’ seemed to cause Sherlock Holmes physical pain. But a look from John kept his mouth shut.//

The trousers were a little too large now, so he cinched his belt more tightly.

It was only after he went into the kitchen to put the kettle on that John realised what a funny thing the subconscious was.

Yes, it certainly was hilarious, the tricks a mind could play.

Which had to be the explanation for the fact that for the first time in at least three months [it had taken the previous three months to break the bloody habit], John automatically made two cups of tea.

Sherlock Holmes was alive and so John Watson made two cups of tea. It was as natural as breathing.

When he realised what he had done, John leaned against the table and just let the tears roll down his face. This time he didn’t stop them.

Two cups of tea went cold.

2

Mycroft really had no choice at all.

The Korean situation had degenerated rather badly overnight and as a result, he had things to do. People must be spoken to, various actions must be taken, various other actions must be prevented. In short, Mycroft Holmes had things to do, which meant that he needed to go to his office. Truthfully, he could have done everything necessary from home, but that wouldn’t have done at all, because he had to be seen to be taking action, seen to be in charge. Perception was reality.

He was not entirely comfortable leaving Sherlock on his own [well, except for the spying eyes] but there was really no choice, so he wrote a note and was out the door very quickly, before the sun was even up.

At the office the situation was just as he had expected to find it: regimented, quiet activity. No one would display the vague sense of panic that everyone was feeling. Mycroft’s arrival elevated the intensity, at least until he disappeared into his office and closed the door.

He did take a moment, while awaiting Anthea’s arrival with the latest communiqués, to indulge his personal concerns by checking the live feed from John’s flat. There was not much to see. John was simply standing in the kitchen, two cups of tea in front of him [?], weeping quietly.

Could that be interpreted as a positive development? Mycroft rather thought so, but the fact that he could not be sure of it annoyed him.

Anthea entered and deposited a depressingly thick stack of papers onto his desk. 

Mycroft sighed. Still, it came as something of a relief to turn his attention to a short madman threatening domination and destruction of the world. [Although, in truth, Mycroft felt quite sure that a very different short man in a jumper and plaid shirt could be equally dangerous under the proper circumstances.]

It was only to be hoped that the unexpected resurrection of a certain consulting detective did not provide those circumstances.

Sadly, he could only deal with one diminutive threat at a time, so he turned his attention to saving the rest of world.

 

3

Death changed a man.

Even, apparently, fake death.

Sherlock Holmes accepted that, because there was no other way to account for, to explain, the way he was feeling.

//The way he was feeling.//

Just those words were enough to make him want to shoot holes in the wall. It was feelings that had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

//Alone is what I know. Alone protects me.//

Of course, even as he’d uttered those words, he knew they were a lie.

By now, even the pretense of Alone being at all good was just a distant [and rather fond] memory.

He had only slept for twenty-seven minutes. The rest of the night was spent just staring into the darkness. The darkness was his friend.

Sherlock hated himself for the maudlin thoughts that occupied his mind.

It all felt so wrong.

His entire life [well, since about the age of seven at least] Sherlock had a firm idea of just who he was. What he was. 

High functioning sociopath.

Freak. [Did Donovan really think she had invented that appellation for him?]

Heartless bastard. [Heartless sounded desirable at the moment. Would that he were.]

Iceman.

On his good days, back when he still had good days, Sherlock liked to see himself as a creature composed of graceful movement, bolts of brilliance bright as lightning, and an endless source of clever retorts.

But all of that seemed very far away at the moment.

Now he just felt lost. Untethered.

Hope, that creature with wings, had flown away. [And how did he even remember that? Poems were useless information.]

Things kept coming into his mind.

//Yes, John, when I jumped, as I was falling, I was frightened.//

Sherlock put both hands to his skull and rubbed fiercely.

This had all been a mistake. No matter what Mycroft said, it would have been better if he’d just stayed away. Stayed dead. Nobody hated a dead man. No one rejected a deceased hero. Sherlock was aware that, in theory, he always sounded like a good idea. It was only after people were confronted with the reality of him that his charms disappeared rather quickly.

This was a circumstance that had always puzzled him, as it seemed the reverse should have been the case. When people found out about his brilliance, his amazing deductive abilities, shouldn’t their admiration for him increase? But for some reason that never seemed to happen.

Except once.

Sherlock curled into himself. Literally and figuratively.

He had sincerely believed that Mycroft would return last night with John. Of course, he knew that John might well reject him like everyone else had eventually done, but he also believed that at least that rejection would be delivered in person. Yes, John would be angry. There would be yelling involved. He might even take a swing at Sherlock and Sherlock would accept the blow, gladly. He would take the anger. After all, he deserved it. And then they would have worked it out.

But he had never expected this. He had never really believed that John would simply refuse to see him. Refuse to talk to him, even.

Refuse him.

Finally he left the sofa, ignoring a note from Mycroft, and went to take a long, hot shower. Such things were still luxuries. He shaved carefully and tousled his hair to make it look more as it used to. Then he dressed in a black suit that hung just a little too loosely on his body now, a plum silk shirt, polished shoes. Mycroft had his uses.

When he left the building, it was not a surprise to find a car waiting at the kerb, and he ordered the driver to take him to 221B Baker Street.

It felt very odd and yet absolutely right to go into this place that still meant home to him. Mrs. Hudson was on a week’s holiday in Cornwall with her sister, the grand prize in a contest she didn’t actually remember entering. Yes, it was sometimes very useful having Mycroft as a brother.

Sherlock soon found himself sitting in the flat, which had changed very little. Except that he was alone.

Sherlock realised suddenly that he was nearly six hours early for John’s arrival. If he even came.

But that was fine. He could wait.

4

John remembered the feelings he was having now.

He could recall sitting on base in Afghanistan, experiencing the same sensation of thousands of tiny insects crawling across his skin [not to be confused with the real bugs that frequently appeared.] His nerve endings were tingling; he wanted to jump right out of his skin. It was the waiting that did it. The anticipation that something was about to happen and the not knowing how it would all turn out.

That was exactly the way he felt now.

Once he had recovered himself a bit and made another [one!] cup of tea, John didn’t know exactly what to do next. He thought about looking at his blog, but that held no appeal. What would he say? It certainly wasn’t up to him to announce the miracle of Sherlock’s return.

//One more miracle. Just for me.//

When that thought struck him, it was like a physical blow. He actually fell to the chair.

Sherlock was back. The bastard really could perform miracles.

John thought he should really have been somewhat more surprised about that fact.

Finally, he couldn’t stand to be in this dreadful flat for one more moment. John grabbed his jacket and, after a moment’s thought, his gun. [Sherlock Holmes was alive, so John Watson made tea and carried a gun. That was life, apparently.] Then he literally ran down the stairs and out of the building, startling a couple of neighbors. They were only used to him plodding along.

Then he began to feel slightly foolish again, realising that he had absolutely no idea where he was going. So he ended up in the local park, walking until he found a bench in the sun, and sitting with a sigh. Time to think.

Before he could think much beyond Sherlock lied to me and Sherlock is alive someone settled onto the other end of the bench. Another morning walker.

“Hello, Captain Watson,” said a man’s voice.

He blinked at the stranger. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s been a while and you probably don’t remember all your patients. Why should you, after all?”

John attempted a smile, with no great success. In truth, the man looked not at all familiar. “Since you called me ‘captain’, I’m guessing we met in Afghanistan?”

“Yes.” The man was staring at two children playing with a ball nearby, watched over by a rather sleepy looking woman. “You saved my life.”

“That was my job,” John said, realizing even as he spoke how ungracious the words sounded.

“Yes, I know.” The man shrugged. “It meant rather more to me.”

John felt guilty. “Sorry--?”

“Jenks. Edgar Jenks. Formerly Sergeant Jenks. You operated on me and removed a bullet from my chest. They said it was a spectacular piece of surgery.”

There was nothing to say in response to that. Understandable that he could not remember any one particular patient from those days. John could not even really remember the person he had been back then. The person he had become with Sherlock had subsumed John Watson, the captain and doctor. And then when Sherlock was gone what was left? An empty shell.

Jenks took a breath. “I was very sorry to read about all your troubles. With your, uh, friend, Mr. Holmes. I thought the papers were a disgrace.”

John could not talk about that. “So how is it for you these days?” he asked instead. It might help somehow, knowing that the man he had saved was having a good life. Knowing that John Watson had done something good for someone.

But Jenks only grimaced. “Not so good as things might be,” he said in a low voice. “My wife…while I was over there, she got breast cancer. Fought it for a long time. Died last year.”

“I am sorry,” John said. He really was.

Jenks nodded. “I know you understand. The loss…”

John did not know when he stopped caring what people thought of the relationship he’d had with Sherlock. How could he expect the rest of the world to understand what he himself didn’t? At least he did understand Losing.

Apparently it was only Finding he was struggling with.

“I just wish…” Jenks paused. “Not sure she really knew how much I...how much she meant to me.” He was silent for a moment, staring into the distance. “ Captain, truthfully, I would give the whole world for one more chance to tell her.”

John suddenly lost the power to breath.

Something must have shown on his face, because Jenks leaned toward him. “Sir? Are you all right?”

He nodded jerkily. “Fine. Sorry. Just remembered…somewhere I have to be.” He managed to stand and shake Jenks by the hand, then set off at a near trot for the tube station.

//Sherlock is alive.//

It was still hours until the time arranged to meet Sherlock, but John didn’t care. All of a sudden, he had to be at Baker Street. He had to go home.

5

Naturally he couldn’t just sit for too long.

Instead he decided to make a tour of the flat, a place that had once been as familiar to him as the contours of his own body. To begin with, he climbed the stairs to what had once been John’s bedroom. All empty now, of course. The bed stripped down to the bare mattress. All the bits and pieces with which John had surrounded himself were gone. Sherlock still had a complete mental inventory of everything that had been in the room, although John never knew that and probably would have found it a bit…not good. 

Sherlock felt no guilt, however, for the hours spent snooping [investigating] because how else was he supposed to have learned everything there was to know about his friend? He never really asked himself why it was so important to commit everything having to do with John to his memory palace, but one night a few months ago he’d been very glad to have so much to remember. He’d been in Russia, trying to evade the pursuit of several very determined gangsters by hiding in the sewers. It had meant hours in the dark, surrounded by the wetness and the stink, and the only thing that kept him sane was cataloguing John’s bedroom.

The place felt so wrong now, with everything that meant John ripped away.

The wardrobe was empty, save for one crumpled teeshirt he found shoved way in the back of the shelf, obviously overlooked in the packing. Sherlock pulled it out and smoothed the thin cotton with his hands, before carefully folding the shirt and replacing it neatly on the shelf. He would mention it to John, in case the other man wanted it back.

The dresser held only a few pieces of paper, old receipts, appointment cards, nothing of interest, so Sherlock ignored them. The bedside table held some tissues, a calendar, and something from a newspaper [a tabloid, judging by the typeface]. There was no way of knowing what the article had said, because it had been ripped into small pieces.

Sherlock closed the door very carefully on John’s room and went down to the other bedroom, the one that had been his own. In contrast to the room he’d just left, this one looked much the same as it had on the last day he saw it. He sat on the bed and looked around wearily. He had supposed that he would feel more about being in here than he did.

When he looked, most of his clothes were gone [not a surprise, as he had already seen them at Mycroft’s.] The periodic table chart was still on the wall. None of it meant anything. As he was leaving the room, he noticed one anomaly: Something had been shoved under the pillows on his bed. He pushed the pillows aside and found his other purple silk shirt wadded up there. He’d wondered why only one had turned up in his brother’s guest room.

Odd.

The shirt, of course, was horribly wrinkled and also stained. Sherlock lifted the fabric and touched his tongue to one of the dried spots. Salty. Human tears.

//Oh, John.//

It was ridiculously simple to deduce the story of what had happened here. Simple and entirely devastating. John Watson had sat here, or lain here perhaps, and cried a great number of tears into this shirt.

Nothing had ever hit Sherlock Holmes with such utterly destructive force as the thought of the courageous soldier/doctor/blogger reduced to such helpless grief. Now he understood with perfect clarity and resignation why John was so angry, so unforgiving.

He held onto the shirt for a few more moments and then, viciously, returned it to its place under the pillows.

This time he slammed the door as he left the room.

The bathroom held no interest, but he took a quick pee, not least because it was pleasant to do so in a clean place.

Back in the sitting room, he saw that very little had been removed. The Strad was at Mycroft’s. His favorite cushion, the Union flag one, was gone and so was the ashtray he had liberated from the palace.  
The kitchen was clean, save for a thin layer of dust everywhere. There were no experiments on the table. No kettle on the boil. No milk in the fridge.

Sherlock leaned against the wall for a moment, wondering why an absence of dairy products hurt just a little. And then wondering if he had completely lost his mind.

When his phone rang, he was tempted to simply ignore it, but knew that if he did, Mycroft was not beyond just showing up at the door, which he definitely did not want “What?” he snapped, taking a glass from the cupboard.

Mycroft ignored the tone. “Why are you at Baker Street?” he asked.

“Waiting.”

“There is a considerable amount of time before 15:00.”

Sherlock sighed. “Your point?” There were some slightly furry ice cubes in the tiny freezer and he dropped several into the glass.

There was a pause. Sherlock filled the glass with water.

“I have information.”

Sherlock straightened and walked back into the sitting room. He dropped onto the settee again. “Moran?”

“What else? My source confirms your suspicions. He is in London, although managing to evade us at the moment.”

Sherlock snorted.

“He has evaded you as well, brother dear.”

“Yes, but I am not the British government, am I?”

“Is that all you have to say?”

Even though Mycroft could not see him [theoretically] Sherlock shrugged. “What would you have me say?”

Mycroft gave a small hiss of irritation. “My information also says that Moran has two targets. You are one.”  
“And John is the other, of course. Mycroft, as a personal favor to me could you just try to avoid stating the obvious?” Again, there was a pause. “You’re watching him?” Sherlock asked after a moment.

“Indeed. Although protecting someone from a sniper is difficult.”

“I know that!”

“It may also interest you to know that the most recent sighting strongly indicates that the good doctor is no more inclined than you to wait until the appointed hour.”

Sherlock felt his stomach drop. “John is on his way here?”

“Apparently. I thought of offering transportation, but decided that discretion might be best at the moment. So all I will do now is wish you luck.”

Sherlock ended the call without responding to that. Then he turned his phone off to prevent another. He swallowed half the water.

After a moment, Sherlock stood and went to the window.

He stared out for several moments, knowing full well that what happened in the next little while would determine the rest of his life. What would he be able to tell simply by watching John walk towards the flat? John could surprise him so often that he was never certain of how the other man would react.

Sherlock forced himself to relax. //John is coming. That fact is all that matters. We will work this out. We will.//

He would not---could not--- allow himself to think otherwise.

After a few more minutes, what Sherlock saw through the window made him catch his breath as his heart seemed to stop beating for just a moment.

6

While reason told him that it probably was not the longest Tube ride in written history, it still felt that way to John. Because of the hour [which was past the morning rush], he had no problem getting a seat. The only problem was the one he had staying in the seat during the [probably not] slowest ride in Tube history, because his whole body was twitching with the urge to move, to do something, to expend some of the frantic energy that was coursing through him. This was different from the crawly insect feeling he’d had earlier. He was no longer waiting for something to happen. It had happened [it had happened] and now he was responding. Albeit too damned slowly.

Ever since he’d heard Jenks’ sad words---would give the world for one more chance to tell her---John understood that he had been given that chance. Why it had come to him and not poor Jenks, he had no idea. Jenks probably deserved it more, but John Watson would be damned if he was going to let it go.

All the times over the past months when he had said to himself, //god, if only I could tell Sherlock what he meant to me, if only I could let him know that I need him so badly it hurts//, all those moments came back to him now.

Of course, it was not that simple.

He was still angry.

Still hurt.

Still needed to hear some damned good reasons for what had happened.

But all of that paled when set against one simple fact that was like a mantra strumming through his mind.

//Sherlock is alive. Sherlock is alive.//

“Sherlock is alive,” he said aloud, without intending to.

The old lady sitting next to him looked up from her Sudoku book. “What’s that, dear?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, smiling at her. But then, suddenly, he wanted to tell someone. Just to share the amazing news. “Only…I just found out that a good friend, my best friend in fact, who I thought was dead is actually still alive.”

It probably sounded rather strange, but the woman just returned his rather giddy smile with a sweet one of her own. “Well, that is good, isn’t it?”

John just nodded.

Finally, finally, they reached Baker Stree station.  
John was the first person off the train, first one through the turnstile, and out onto the pavement. He walked quickly to the corner, made a right, and was on Baker Street, moving towards 221B. And it was nothing like the dream, thank god. The sun was shining and people actually saw him. Someone he vaguely recognised as a former neighbor gave him a friendly nod. This was definitely not the dream.

He paused for one moment and could neither help looking up towards the window nor grinning broadly. The sun kept him from seeing if anyone was standing there. God, if the bastard was really alive, he was going to hit him so hard. Carefully, of course, to avoid damaging those parts that should not be damaged.

The door was unlocked, so he just went in and started climbing the seventeen steps. It occurred to him that since the door had been unlocked perhaps Sherlock was as impatient for this…reunion as he was. Maybe he was waiting upstairs right now.

John kept his steps careful and deliberately measured. He would not run, much as he wanted to, and he would not burst through the doorway like a madman. What he did was rehearse in his mind what to say when he set eyes on the madman again.

//“Hello, Sherlock.”  
“Where the hell have you been?”  
“You’re a bastard, Sherlock.”  
“Oh, god, I’m so glad to see you.”  
“Why did you leave me behind?”//

Even as he stepped into the room, John still did not know what he was going to say, although his mouth seemed to be opening.

In fact, it did not matter what he might have said, because the room was empty.

The kitchen was empty, too.

As were both bedrooms and the bathroom.

John did not know what the hell was going on.

Was this just some new variation on the damned dream?

He returned to the sitting room and it was not until then that he saw Sherlock’s coat [?] lying on the chair. A glass of water was on the table in front of the settee. A couple of ice cubes floated in the water. That meant ssomeone had been in this room just a few minutes earlier, and John knew, without knowing how he knew, that it was Sherlock. There was the coat, of course, but that seemed to mean very little, because he had the same damned coat hanging in his flat. Maybe he could just bloody smell him, that familiar mix of expensive shampoo, clean skin, and the particular, unexplainable scent that just said Sherlock.

Was it odd that he knew the scent of his flatmate so well?

Was it even odder that he did not care about that?

So he knew without a doubt that Sherlock had been here. But where the hell was he now?

Maybe he’d run to the shops for something, although unless the man had changed dramatically, that seemed unlikely. What he would have done was wait for John to arrive and then tell him what was needed.

John couldn’t help chuckling just a little. When the hell had he last chuckled?

He went to the window to check for the unlikely sight of Sherlock striding back to the flat with a bottle of milk in his hand.

Some movement from the building across the road caught his attention and he froze. The movement had been the ripping down of a window shade and he could now see clearly into the room. What he saw in that other flat made him gasp. Two men were fighting, brutally, and one of those men was Sherlock. His first instinct was to run back down the steps and go across to that room where Sherlock was clearly battling for his life.

And just as clearly losing.

The other man had Sherlock down and was holding what looked like a very big knife to his throat. John yanked the window open with one hand while he reached for his gun with the other. It took a split second to line up the shot and then he fired.

One shot. Just like the first time.

John lowered the gun and focused again. A moment later, Sherlock pushed himself to his feet and staggered over to the window. This time John did not hurry from the scene. Instead, he stood and met Sherlock’s gaze.

Sherlock raised one hand and pressed it against the unbroken part of the window. John lifted his hand against the glass as well, holding it there. Neither man shifted his gaze.

They stood like that until Mycroft’s team turned up just a little too late to be of use. Sherlock turned away to speak to them.

John walked over to the settee and settled there to wait. He set the gun down onto the table. He picked up the glass of water and drank the rest of it.

John Watson could be very patient when necessary.

 

7

Not that John was counting. He was not, after all, an obsessive genius consulting bastard. But he still somehow knew that it was ten minutes and twenty-seven seconds before he heard the downstairs door opening.

There was a pause.

John took one deep breath and then another.

Then he heard the slow and steady tread of footsteps climbing the stairs.

To John Watson the sound might as well have been the Hallelujah Chorus.

He did not move. He just waited.

#


	8. Two Such As You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, a reunion. I hope you feel as if it were worth waiting for.

Two such as you…  
Cannot be parted nor be swept away  
From one another once you are agreed  
That life is only life forevermore  
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.  
-Robert Frost

1

Sherlock deliberately calmed his breathing before stepping through the doorway. Then, once inside, he stopped and looked at the man who had just saved his life. Again. Ironically, it was now up to this same man to decide if the life he had saved would be worth anything at all. Yet again, Sherlock was reminded how much he despised irony.

Whatever he might have thought about, dreamed about, planned to be his first words for when [if] he finally saw John Watson again, vanished in an instant. “I can explain,” was what Sherlock actually said, the words coming out in a desperate rush. He had meant to sound calm and reasonable. He had meant to sound like himself. Maybe over the past months the real Sherlock Holmes had been irretrievably lost.

[It was better not to think that just possibly this was who he actually was and the man he’d been for years the façade.]

Unexpectedly [what else with this man?] John smirked. “ You can explain? What? Everything? The meaning of life? String theory? Why you aren’t dead? Russell Brand?” Something subtle in his face seemed to change and his voice went hard. “Can you also explain why you lied to the man who was supposed to be your best friend? And why you then left him broken-hearted for all these months?”

Moving hesitantly, so unlike his usual manner, Sherlock went to sit, not comfortably, in his chair, having decided almost instantly that joining John on the settee was probably not an option. “All right,” he said. “The meaning of life? There is none, as far as I can tell. String theory? I might have known about it once, but if so it’s been deleted. I am not dead because there was a plan. Russell Brand? No idea at all who that might be.” Then he leaned forward, resting both elbows on his knees, and stared intently at John. “I lied to the man who is my best friend, my only friend, as he well knows, to save his life.” He paused, biting his lower lip. “I did not intend to break his heart. Honestly, I did not know I could do that.” He shook his head. “I really did not know.”

“You could. You did.”

“I...am sorry.” Sherlock closed his eyes just for a moment, looking for courage. “If it matters at all to you, John, my own heart was broken as well.” He paused, and then shrugged. “It was shattered before I really even knew it existed.” A bitter non-smile crossed his lips. “That’s either very sad or very amusing. I don’t know which.”

“It matters, Sherlock,” John said in a voice that suddenly sounded raspy. “Sometimes I think nothing else matters to me at all.” Then he leaned back against the cushions. “So, simply as a matter of curiosity, who did I just kill?”

It probably was a good idea, Sherlock decided, to step back from the personal just for a moment and talk about the case. Such as it was. Otherwise he might get lost trying to understand what John had just said. “His name was Seb Moran. Ex-military, world-class sniper and Moriarty’s right hand man. So to speak.”

“Umm.” John seemed to think about that for a moment. “Military sniper? Really? Hearing that almost makes me think that I could have been bloody useful these last few months. Had I not been left behind.”

Sherlock frowned. “You would have been extremely useful. As always. But I could not risk it.”

“Not really your decision. Or at least it shouldn’t have been.”

Sherlock pyramided his hands as he thought about what to say. “I did the best I could under the circumstances that existed at the time.”

Now John looked disappointed. “Oh, Sherlock, that was the best you could do? I expect more than that from you.”

“You always expect too much of me.” The words came out more sharply than he had intended.

“Do I? Should I apologise for that?”

“You have absolutely nothing to apologise for,” Sherlock said fiercely.

There was a pause.  
“You were the first person ever to think the best of me, John.” Sherlock shook his head. “I betrayed that and it was the hardest thing I have ever done.”

John ruffled a hand through his hair, which was longer and slightly greyer than it had been. “Unless I’m still out of the loop, could you tell me what just happened here?”

“You are not out of the loop,” Sherlock objected. “Never have been, actually.”

“Oh? That’s not how it feels---felt--- to me. To me, it felt like I was so far out of the loop that I was just floating in space, untethered, and there was no way back.”

Sherlock hesitated and then accepted that there was absolutely nothing to be gained in holding back now. And possibly a great deal to lose. Complete honesty, painful openness was all he could offer this man, his friend. If it felt like striping himself bare emotionally, so be it. “Everything I have done, I discussed with you. You were not out of the loop, John.”

John was watching him with a quiet, unreadable gaze. “Except that I was never in the same country. Or on the same continent.”

“That didn’t matter. You know it never mattered.”

“I know,” John said very softly. He waved a hand towards the window. “So?”

Sherlock took a deep breath. “I was standing there, waiting for you.”

“Mycroft told you I was on the way, of course.”

Sherlock nodded. “Something, a movement, a flash of light, in the window caught my attention. And suddenly I understood. Ran a quick check on the property and saw that it is still empty after the explosion and now owned by a shell company. Although about to be reclaimed by the bank because no one had paid the mortgage since…” He glanced at John. “Since Moriarty died.”

“On the roof of Barts,” John said dully.

Sherlock just gave another, slightly jerky, nod. “I was still watching and even through the shade I could see a shape moving. It made such perfect sense that Moran would be sitting there across from our flat just waiting for us to be together again. I couldn’t believe that hadn’t occurred to me before. Or to Mycroft.”

“Our flat,” John murmured.

They shared a look that was so familiar it made the fragments of Sherlock’s broken heart tremble.

Sherlock shifted in the chair. “He would have shot you first, John. I would have had to watch you die and then he would have killed me.” He thought about saying what he was feeling, that death would have come as a blessing in those circumstances, but he knew that John would not be pleased with that. So instead he continued with his narrative. “I went out the rear door, evading Mycroft’s useless spies, and worked my way around until I could get into that building.”

“Never thought of getting backup first? Or of waiting for me?”

Sherlock made a sharp gesture and spoke savagely. “Have you not been listening, John? He would have shot you on the pavement as I watched from the window. There was no time. I will not apologise for what I did.”

John just nodded.

Sherlock turned rueful. “I did, however, miscalculate just a little. I thought he would be too distracted by his own preparations to notice me until it was too late.”

John almost smiled, although it was in no way a pleasant expression. “Good snipers are rarely distracted, Sherlock,” he commented almost idly. “You see, having been at war, I have a rather extensive knowledge of snipers. So, useful again.”

Sherlock glared at him. “That point has been made, John. He managed to overpower me and…well, you saw what almost happened. My blogger saved me again.”

John did not look happy at the mention of the blog.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“You may hit me if you like,” Sherlock offered, meaning it.

But John just shook his head. “Maybe later. I missed you,” he said abruptly.  
Sherlock met his gaze. “I missed you, too, so much. All the time. More than I ever thought I could miss anyone, if you must know.” He realised that he sounded almost irritated by that fact. This peeling away of his protective layers was never going to be pretty.

“I wanted to die. Death seemed to be the only thing that would make the hurting stop.” John’s words were said flatly, given no emotional weight, just a fact. “Every day I thought about putting the gun into my mouth and pulling the trigger.”

Sherlock felt as if he might actually throw up. “God, John.”

The other man barked a laugh. “Quite a turn-up that would have been, right? You could have come swanning back all ready to play the hero and found me---”

“Stop,” Sherlock interrupted. “Please don’t.” He knew that his hands were shaking, so he gripped his knees. “I can’t think about that.”

“I have lived it,” John said brutally.

“I know,” Sherlock whispered.

“Do you?” It seemed to be a serious question, not simply an emotional reaction.

Sherlock did not speak quickly. He opened his mouth, said nothing, closed it and finally started again. But even then he did not answer the question directly. “One night,” he said slowly, “I was in Argentina. The man I was searching for had a house out in the middle of nowhere. Set in the jungle, really. I was lying in a culvert filled with mud, being attacked by some particularly vicious breed of spider. Hundreds of them were crawling all over my body, biting me. Each bite itched unbearably and burned as if I were being branded. I had not eaten in three days. It rained off and on. Talking to you kept me alive. I talked about all the cases we’d had, everything we’d done. I told you things…words that I wished I’d said before. Words I should have shouted down to you from that bloody rooftop. After ten hours and fourteen minutes the man finally turned up. I ambushed him before he reached the house. I believe he thought it was some demon from hell attacking. Or a madman. Probably he was right on both counts. Didn’t matter. I whispered my name to him and then your name, so he would know who was holding the gun to his head and why. Then I killed him. I stole the jeep he’d been driving and drove it until the petrol tank was empty. Then I hitched a ride with a farmer hauling a truckload of chickens. He made me ride with the chickens.” Sherlock was silent for a moment and then he sighed. “While I was driving, I told you what I had done. You asked me if he had been an evil man and I explained to you that he made the Semtex vests for Moriarty. You told me it was fine that I killed him. I cried, because you didn’t hate me for what I had become.”

When he ran out of words, Sherlock finally looked up and only then did he realise that tears were rolling down John’s face.

After a moment, Sherlock pushed himself up from the chair and walked to the settee, dropping to his knees in front of John. “I missed you,” he said.

John used a sleeve to wipe his face. “Sherlock,” he said and in that single word was all the forgiveness that the other man had been seeking.

Sherlock bent and rested his head in John’s lap, beyond caring what it said about him that he needed this. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to break your heart.”

John rested both hands in Sherlock’s hair. “Shh,” he said quietly. “You’re home now. We’re both home. Hearts intact.”

They sat like that in silence for a very long time.

Both men knew that there were many things still to be said.

And both of them understood that there was nothing that had to be said.

At last, John stirred. “You need to eat,” he decided, smoothing Sherlock’s curls gently. “You’re nothing but skin stretched over bones.”

Sherlock chuckled softly, not yet lifting his head from John’s lap. “My doctor,” he murmured fondly. He had forgotten what it felt like to be taken care of.

“Someone has to be.”

“And certainly no one else wants the job.” Still not moving away, Sherlock reached for his phone and, without even looking, sent a short text. “Mycroft will arrange for some Chinese to be delivered.”

“He’ll be thrilled to be taking lunch orders.”

“Well, I’m sure he’s thoroughly bored with the Korean situation by now anyway.” Sherlock finally sat up and made a not-terribly-successful attempt to smooth his unruly hair. “John,” was all he said.

John smiled. “Sherlock.”

They sat in blessed silence and waited for Mycroft’s minion to deliver Kung Pao prawns and General Tao’s chicken. Occasionally one of them reached out for a quick, light pat of the other’s arm or leg.

That was enough for the moment.

In fact, it was everything.

 

2

It was very early the next morning when Mycroft himself came to Baker Street. After climbing the stairs silently, he pushed open the door and stepped into the flat. He was only mildly surprised to find both Sherlock and John stretched out on the settee, sleeping.

Empty takeaway cartons littered the table. Two pairs of shoes were placed side by side next to the settee.

Apparently Sherlock had been forgiven.

He just studied the two men for a short time and then coughed lightly.

It was John who opened his eyes. “It’s not tomorrow yet,” he said.

“Well, actually, it is,” Mycroft pointed out. “Although admittedly the day is still young.”

“What do you want?” John asked softly.

“I need your statements regarding the events of yesterday.”

Sherlock stirred and muttered something unintelligible. John simply moved a hand in soft circles on his back and made some soothing sounds that were not quite words. Mycroft watched, slightly amazed, as his brother settled down peacefully once again; he decided to ignore as absolutely irrelevant the unexpected warmth that seemed to settle in his chest at the sight.

“Sherlock is very tired,” John said. “We talked most of the night.”

“About what, if I might ask?” His brother would have told him to piss off, but he knew that John Watson was a polite man.

“About what he’d done. About how I’d felt.” John gave a small shrug. “We talked.” He seemed to fractionally tighten his grip on the sleeping man.  
“Now he needs to sleep.” When Mycroft did not move, he sighed. “I shot Moran, who had a knife to your brother’s throat. I think that should earn me a bit of a grace period.”

Mycroft stared at him. “All right,” he said. “Telephone me when both of you are ready to talk. But sooner rather than later, please.”

“Fine.”

Mycroft thought of several other things that should be said, but then he thought better of them all and just left.

3

It was another hour before Sherlock stirred again. John spent that time not sleeping. Instead, he simply watched Sherlock, noticing lines in his face that had not been there before. Noticing a new scar, faded but still visible, that ran from his left ear almost to his mouth. Noticing a few grey hairs. The memory of several bruises. He ran a finger lightly along the scar, thinking, wondering exactly how it happened, wanting to weep over the fact that he had not been there to clean and bandage the wound.

A few minutes later, Sherlock woke, turned his head, and then blinked several times as if to be sure the sight of the flat in front of him was not going to vanish. He did not say anything, but only sighed deeply and cushioned his face into John’s shoulder again.

John stayed just as he was and began to stroke a hand down Sherlock’s back, feeling the spinal column much too easily. After four strokes, he spoke. “The day after your…’death’, I left the flat and walked for hours, “ he began. His lips twisted just a little. “I used all of your tricks to avoid the CCTV cameras. It was nearly one in the morning when I stopped walking. I was at St. Barts. I stood just where I had the day before and replayed the whole conversation in my mind.”

Sherlock’s body tensed a little.

“I couldn’t understand, Sherlock, I just couldn’t understand, no matter how hard I tried. What you said was not true, that I knew even as you were still talking. It was all lies and I didn’t know why you were lying to me. You never lied to me before.” John smiled faintly. “At least not about anything important. Or at least not too often about something important.”

Sherlock murmured something into John’s shoulder, but he couldn’t hear the words. It didn’t matter.

“Finally, I went into the hospital, past the crime scene tape and a guard who was more asleep than awake, and made my way to the roof. I could see the blood stain from Moriarty. I spit on it. Then I went to sit on the ledge where you had been standing.”

“John.” The word was a mere sigh.

“Oh, god, it was so tempting. I wanted to just fall forward and follow you.”

Now Sherlock turned his head so that his mouth was free. “I was frightened, John, as I fell.”

“I know.” There was a moment of quiet. “It was dawn when I left the roof and walked back to the flat. I packed up my things, called Harry to bring her van to pick me up, and left. Haven’t been back until now.”

“Thank you for not jumping.”

John huffed. “Do you know why I didn’t?”

Sherlock shook his head. 

“It was because I didn’t want the world to think that you’d been a fraud or a fool. I wanted to clear your name.” His voice took on an edge. “And if you ask me again why I care what people think about you, I might just get up and walk out of here.”

For the first time since he had awakened, Sherlock lifted his head and met John’s gaze. “I knew why even then,” he said. “But I didn’t want you to… care that much, because I knew that things were going to go horribly wrong very soon. I supposed it would be easier if I could make you care less.”

“By being a complete arse.”

Sherlock tried a smirk. It was only moderately successful. “Easy for me.”

“Much too easy.” John almost smiled. He was stroking Sherlock’s back again. “Wish you had shared what you knew.”

“You suspected as well, John, I know you did.”  
He sighed. “Yes, I did. But the difference is, I thought we’d be facing it together.” He wrapped a hand around Sherlock’s wrist like a handcuff. “I thought we were…linked. That’s what I was counting on.”

Sherlock took a deep breath. “We were,” he said. He twisted his hand so that it gripped John’s. “We were linked from the beginning,” he said. “Even if we didn’t know it.”

No one spoke for ten minutes. Their hands remained clasped together.

“So,” John said at last.

“So,” Sherlock agreed.

“I’m still angry.”

“And I’m still sorry. But don’t ask me to regret it, John. I will never regret saving you.”

John shook his head. “We’re both quite mad, aren’t we?”

Sherlock flashed a smile. “Indisputably.”

After another moment, John bent forward a little and placed a light kiss into Sherlock’s hair.

“Oh,” Sherlock said. He lifted his free hand and rested it against John’s chest, over his heart. Then he lifted his head and put his lips to John’s. It was light and quick and it was the answer to everything for both of them.

“Okay, then,” John said firmly.

“Is it all fine, John?” Apparently Sherlock still needed this one question answered.

John gave a soft laugh into the dark curls. “It always has been, Sherlock. It always has been.”

Something was decided---or accepted---in that moment, although no one was ready to name it yet.

They kissed again, still slowly, still softly. Then their foreheads rested together.

After a moment, they settled down together once more and began to talk, this time not about the past, but about the future, a lazy conversation that rambled aimlessly, with no need to reach a destination.

After all, they both knew where they were going.

Eventually words dwindled off and, still wrapped together, they slept again.

 

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this was the end of the story. But those who know me, know me. So I felt some romance and fluff was in order to make up for the angst. So I wrote an Epilogue, which will be posted tomorrow. And do we want to know how sad I am? Then I wrote an Afterthought. And a Coda. I know. Professional help is in order for me. Anyway, hope you enjoy the happy bits to come.


	9. All There Is:  An Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life after the reunion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really just a bit of fluff. But it shows some evolution of the relationship. And, frankly, I just like it.  
> I still can't get the numbers to work out. So it probably won't show, but just to remind everyone, this is Chapter 9 of 11.

That love is all there is  
Is all we know of Love,  
It is enough.  
-Emily Dickenson

 

John stood a little apart from the others and just watched Sherlock Holmes in action. The consulting detective seemed to almost dance around the crime scene, rattling off facts and statistics in a rapid-fire and delightfully arrogant manner. The choreography was so familiar and so perfectly Sherlock that John almost forgot all about the unfortunate corpse lying on the ground. The deceased was always the least important component of a Holmes crime scene anyway.

He was watching Sherlock at work again and, quite honestly, nothing else mattered very much to Dr. Watson.

This was the first scene that they had been asked to visit since the Return. Even with Mycroft’s assistance, it had taken time for all the pieces to fall into place so that this could happen. The two months had chafed on Sherlock, although John was aware that the levels of frustration and irritation were much less acute than would have been true before the Fall. He did not think that was entirely down to the fact that they were now sleeping together [such an assumption would have required a much larger ego than he possessed.] Sleeping together, John?, he could hear Sherlock say, with a raised brow and head tilt thrown in as a bonus. I have not noticed a great deal of actual sleeping going on.

John smirked. He didn’t have to be a genius to know the truth of that statement.

It did still amaze him sometimes just how easily this new aspect of their relationship had settled over them.

He put that thought aside and tried to concentrate on the present fact of a murder, a body, a case. Although, judging from the extravagant gestures and swooping coat, the case was not going to last very long.

There were some within the police department who were still not happy about Sherlock being consulted again, but John figured they’d get over their reluctance after a success or two. That Sherlock would be successful, he had no doubt. And even if they didn’t get over it, who the hell cared?

Lestrade was talking to Sherlock now or, rather, talking at him, because Sherlock was quite blatantly ignoring him. At least there was no shouting yet. John liked to avoid shouting whenever possible. Unless he himself was making the noise. Well, he lived with Sherlock. That he would occasionally be driven to raising his voice was inevitable. No jury would convict.

Sherlock gave his patented ‘where is John?’ look around the parking lot, spotted him, and gave a mouth twitch that no one else would have recognized as a smile. “John, please come here,” he barked out imperially.

Despite the ‘please’, it was clearly an order.

Someone snorted. It was still a common assumption in some quarters that John Watson was nothing more than a tame lapdog for the great detective. Perhaps that should have bothered him, but truthfully he didn’t give a flying fuck. There were other things on his mind.

He just smiled and strolled over to the body, both hands tucked into his pockets; he had learned when to amp down the stress level. “Yes, Sherlock?” he said.

A pale and careless hand was waved in the direction of the corpse. “What do you think?”

It had been a very long time since John even pretended that Sherlock really needed his medical opinion. Most often, all John did was to confirm what the detective already knew. But, at the same time, John no longer doubted how crucial it was to Sherlock for him to be here. Essential, in fact, and they were both all right with that. Undoubtedly because it was just as necessary for him to be at Sherlock’s side. For them, now, denial really was just a river in Egypt.

He pulled on the gloves that Lestrade tossed at him and then knelt on the hard surface for a quick, but thorough examination of the victim.  
“Not shot here, Sherlock,” he pronounced almost immediately. “Not enough blood.” But then he leaned closer for a sniff. “Oh,” he said then, “never mind. The gunshots didn’t kill him at all. Cyanide would be my opinion.” Very early in their partnership they had discovered that both of them belonged to the 40% of the population that could detect the almond odor of the deadly poison. [Sherlock had assured him many times that he would not have let John actually eat the tainted Bird’s custard; it was just the most efficient way of discovering whether or not he could count on John’s sense of smell in the future. There had been yelling.]

John shrugged. “Why someone then felt the need to shoot him three times in the chest is anybody’s guess.”

Sherlock gave him a brilliant smile that verged on being indecently delighted. “Excellent, John, really excellent,” he said before turning briskly to Lestrade. “We’re done here. I would suggest that you question his business partner. Or his wife. See which one will turn the most quickly on the other. Oh, and, John, the gunshots were intended to be a bonding experience by the partner, to prove that they were in it together. Mutually assured destruction, if you will. And that is not a guess.”

“Brilliant, Sherlock.”

Someday, when time allowed, John intended to reflect upon why they seemed to use one another’s name so often when speaking, even if they were the only two people in the room. They always had, but now it was even more pronounced. He had a theory that the many “Johns” and “Sherlocks” offered up in the course of a day were not merely names, but also served as a constant affirmation, a tangible reminder that they were together again. 

Sherlock was adjusting his scarf. “Sadly, their great romance will not survive a murder charge.” He gave a disdainful sniff. “Once again, love is shown to be---” Then, with a fleeting glance sidewise towards where John was standing, watching him curiously, Sherlock broke off and gave an impatient wave of his hand. “We need a cab,” he said brusquely, heading for the main road.

“John,” Lestrade said.

“Greg,” John replied with a nod, setting off in pursuit of Sherlock. As always.

But then Lestrade stepped right in front of him, stopping John in his tracks. “Everything all right?”

John was still watching Sherlock. “Of course. Everything is fine.” And that was an understatement of monumental proportions. “Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked curiously.

“Well, it’s an adjustment, right? Getting back to where you were.”

“We’re adjusted,” John said, now with a hint of humour in his voice.

People were curious, of course. As far as John was concerned, they could think anything they liked and he knew Sherlock cared not at all either. There would be no big pronouncement; it wasn’t necessary. John sometimes amused himself by playing with the idea that one day they’d just show up at a crime scene wearing matching rings and wait for somebody to notice. He knew that Sherlock would be equally entertained by the notion.

For now, he just gave Lestrade a pleasant Watson smile and hurried to catch up with Sherlock.

When John reached the kerb, Sherlock’s hand was already suspended in the air, waiting, and John grasped it, weaving their fingers together in a way that had so quickly become automatic. Had there ever been a time they hadn’t held onto one another like this? It seemed impossible to believe.

A cab was waiting to make a U-turn through the traffic to reach them.

John tried not to smile as he looked at the detective. “Love is shown to be what, Sherlock?” he asked lightly.

Sherlock was scowling. “Oh, complicated, John,” he muttered. “That’s all. It’s just complicated.”

John laughed as they climbed into the car and headed home to Baker Street.

#


	10. The 21:30 To Paddington [An Afterthought]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story was born from something about John's past mentioned briefly in Chapter Five. Romance and fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As sometimes happens real life has reared its head. I will not be able to post the final story tomorrow, so I will post it just after this one is up, just in case someone is waiting for it! I will have internet, though, so any comments would be most welcome to cheer me.  
> NOTE: SORRY I MESSED UP. ORIGINALLY POSTED CHAPTER 10 TWICE AND NO 11. I DELETED THE DUPLICATE, BUT CANNOT ADD 11 UNTIL I GET HOME ON SUNDAY.
> 
> SO SORRY. I AM A TECH IDIOT.

Love at the lips was touch  
As sweet as I could bear.  
-Robert Frost

 

Sherlock was not happy.

Occasionally John felt that those four words were the perfect signature to his life. And then he would always feel slightly guilty for the thought, because he frequently did see Sherlock Holmes when he was happy. In actual fact, a happy Sherlock was definitely one of the wonders of the world [well, John Watson’s world anyway.] But John would have hated to try convincing the rest of the world of that. It just happened that Sherlock was mostly happy when it was only the two of them and John was okay with that. More than okay, in fact.

Of course, even that was not a given.

Present circumstances being a perfect example, because they were quite alone at the moment and there was really no sign of happiness anywhere in the vicinity.

Sherlock was in the seventeenth minute of his irate monologue.“…and the complete idiocy of the South Wales constabulary, dragging me---” Even as lost in frustration as he was, Sherlock [a genius, after all] still had enough common sense to back up just a step and amend that. “—dragging us all the way out here just in time to get caught in a bloody blizzard, of all things. For something so mundane that I won’t even dignify it with the name ‘case.’ It beggars belief, John, it really does.”

By this point in the rant John was only half-listening, but a few words did get through. There was no denying that he still felt a bit warmish inside whenever Sherlock said ‘us.’ Even after nearly a year of their new relationship being an established fact, having it confirmed in that way pleased him enormously. No longer were they simply Sherlock and John. Holmes and Watson. Now they were Us, a whole new and exceedingly remarkable creature. Still, he felt obligated to try and bring a little rationality to the proceedings. Actually, bringing rationality to the proceedings was probably part of the job description of being half of any Us where the other half was Sherlock Holmes. “Hardly a blizzard,” he murmured. “Just some snow. Lots of snow,” he modified, because there really was.

“Lots of snow sounds like a blizzard to me,” Sherlock whinged.  
From somewhere in his entirely unconstructed memory, John discovered and dragged out a random fact. “I believe a blizzard requires snow and wind of at least 56 kilometers per hour. We have no wind, so…” He stopped, trying to read the expression on Sherlock’s face. It seemed to hover somewhere between the usual Holmesian irritation and his singular ‘John-is-Quite-Amazing’ look. John suspected he would never get accustomed to that particular look.

“Hurrumph,” was all Sherlock said though. He sometimes seemed quite devoted to making sure John’s ego stayed in check. John was just astounded that he still had an ego at all. Save for the undeniable fact that anyone who was loved [quite fanatically, not to say frighteningly, on occasion] by this particular man had every reason to feel pretty chuffed about himself.

John just grinned at him, which earned yet another frown. Sherlock did not approve of being a source of amusement for his lover. For his part, John had no intention of not being amused when the situation called for it. Although what it said about his life that being stranded in a blizz---bad snowstorm was now an occasion for amusement he chose not to contemplate at the moment.

“We should have just gotten a hotel room,” John said, which had been his suggestion from the beginning. A suggestion that had been pointedly ignored.

“I would prefer to be at home,” Sherlock said rather primly.

John turned away, pretending to gaze down the tracks.

Consulting detective and homebody. If it were possible, John thought that Sherlock would wrap 221B around himself and take it wherever he went. Given the recent past, that was more than understandable. And rather sweet, although John would never say that aloud.

To top off this already less-than-stellar day, the train was late, no doubt due to the weather. The tiny ticket office was closed and locked, so there was nothing for it except to stand here on the platform in the snow and wait.

To be completely honest, John could not really argue with Sherlock’s main complaint. He was right about the so-called case being boring. It did occur to John to wonder just when he had become the kind of man who found a rather tragic murder-suicide boring.

Then he decided that it didn’t really matter.  
He stamped his feet to warm them up a bit and then leaned against the post holding the schedule board, which now seemed to contain suggestions rather than actual timetables.

Sherlock had stopped moaning, at least, and was now stalking from one end of the platform to the other, peering into the distance as if by force of will he could command the train’s arrival. John didn’t doubt it for a moment. It was possible he had a bit too much faith in Sherlock.

The yellow glow of the station lights gave the entire scene an otherworldly haze, as the large fluffy flakes of snow continued to fall unrelentingly.

It almost seemed as if time had slowed.

John turned to watch Sherlock pace.

All of a sudden, his breath got caught somewhere on the journey to his lungs and refused to move.

John remembered something he had not thought of in a long time. One day when he was fifteen and trying very hard to impress the rather nicely developed daughter of a local estate agent, [so a step up socially for the somewhat inept son of a sporadically employed joiner], he had taken her to a film she very much wanted to see. He hadn’t realised until they were sitting in the theatre that it was the reissue of some Russian epic. It was even later before he figured out that Belinda had no interest in Russian cinema either, but she was slavishly devoted to the main actor, who had two nude scenes.

Thirty minutes in, John was convinced that maybe getting to snog this perky blonde was not worth it. Even if the snog had been a sure thing, it wasn’t worth it. He could barely keep his eyes open. But then, inexplicably, one scene caught his attention. The lovers were standing on a train platform in a snowstorm and they were kissing. Kissing and kissing as the snow drifted onto their shoulders and then they were both crying, because it was all just so damned beautiful and wonderfully romantic.

It was the first time John Watson had really understood the idea of romance. And while he would not have turned down the offer of a snog that evening had it come along [it didn’t] even then he knew that the girl sitting next to him was not the one he would want to stand on the train platform with, kissing through the tears. All he could do was hope that perhaps someday the right one would come along. And eventually that person did appear. Eventually. 

John chuckled under his breath.

His awkward and ignorant fifteen-year-old self, watching the kissing scene in the film, would never have imagined and probably would have been horrified by the fact that the love of his life would turn out to be a six-foot tall genius [male] consulting detective with a head full of dark curls and a razor sharp tongue. 

Life was funny.

As well as unpredictable and occasionally amazing.

John took a deep breath as he walked the length of the platform to where Sherlock stood, continuing to frown into the distance. That frown was turned on him, until Sherlock seemed to read something in the other man’s face and the frown slowly morphed into a John-only smile.

Sherlock reached out to wrap his arms around John and John held onto him as if he would never let go. Which he never would, not again.

Sherlock bent his head to John’s and they kissed, slightly chapped and cold lips touching, just lightly at first. Then somehow, probably defying several laws of science, cold lips on cold lips created flame.

Mouths became vessels of moist heat; tongues became tender rapiers, vying for dominance, but also glad to surrender. 

Time and place lost all meaning.

Occasionally a murmur made it past the tongues and the lips, although neither man really knew what he was saying or hearing. It mattered not at all.

They kissed and kissed as the snow drifted onto their shoulders and John knew there were tears on his face because it was all so damned beautiful and romantic. It was everything that fifteen-year-old boy had dreamed of and so much more than that.

And even though he knew very well that Sherlock Holmes was not the emotional void that most people saw him as, it was still a little startling for John to realise that Sherlock’s eyes were glistening as well. They took a moment to smile at one another.

“John.”

“Sherlock.”  
Their lips met again, more sweetly this time, gentle caresses that said more than any words ever could.

They did not stop kissing until the very late 21:30 to Paddington had pulled to a noisy stop. Then Sherlock wrapped his long fingers around John’s hand as if he would never let go [which he never would, not again] and pulled him onto the train.

The carriage was empty. They settled together into the spacious first class seats and just got back to the kissing. It was a long ride to London, after all, and there was really nothing else to do.

John Watson had rather thought [hoped?] that he was done with having epiphanies in his life, but then he had two more [smallish] ones that night, which turned out to be fine.

The first: I love and am loved more than is actually reasonable. Or even sane.

The second: I can live with that.

#


	11. All I Have To Bring Today [A Coda]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sort of summing up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter that I messed up posting before. Hope you feel it was worth waiting for.

Coda: the concluding part of a  
literary work showing further  
developments in the lives of  
the characters.

 

It’s all I have to bring today,  
This, and my heart besides,  
This and my heart, and all the fields,  
And all the meadows wide…  
This and my heart, and all the bees  
Which in the clover dwell.

-Emily Dickinson

 

It has not been my habit to make tea.

After all, John does it so very well and it seems terribly inefficient not to use our individual talents to the upmost. I do realise, of course, that it seems rather unfair on John that he seems so much more proficient at the mundane tasks, such as grocery shopping, laundry, and, ah, tea making than I, but there it is. And despite what he sometimes claims, I am not  
deliberately bad at such things. My mind is just otherwise occupied.

He does moan about it sometimes.

An exception: Since my Return four years ago, the one thing that John never complains about is making the tea. He understands what that simple task means to me. Brewing up as an act of love. I no longer reject the sentimentality of statements like that. At least not within the walls of this flat.

Not to mention that his tea is much better than mine.

This particular morning, however, I feel that some deviation from the norm might be advisable.

Therefore, at some personal inconvenience, while John showered, I went into the kitchen and turned on the kettle. I took two cups from cabinet, found the teabags and checked that we had untainted milk.  
[By the way, the ‘personal inconvenience’ mentioned earlier was, of course, the fact that John was in the shower and I was in the kitchen trying to find the English Breakfast. Unacceptable, really.]

But sometimes sacrifices must be made.

Actually, it was almost worth it [only almost, because I am quite fond of a shared morning shower], just to see the expression on John’s face when he walked into the kitchen as I set two cups onto the table. His still-damp hair and slightly flushed face made me regret the missed shower more than ever.

Although it must be said that it was just a bit insulting to see how quickly suspicion appeared on that freshly shaved face. “Have you blown something up?” he asked.

“Did you hear an explosion?” I replied rather testily.

He admitted with a shrug that he had not. “Acid, then? Some escaped poisonous insect?”

Sometimes I do wonder what he sees when he looks at me. “I simply thought that it would nice to make you some tea this morning. Is that so odd?”

John was smiling faintly. “Unprecedented, certainly.”

Now that was just unfair and I glared at him so he would understand that I was offended. “How soon you forget. Last month when you had flu, I made many cups of tea. And I heated soup for you.”

Of course, Mrs. Hudson actually made the soup, but I was the one who put it into the microwave whenever John told me that he felt like eating.

I could see the exact moment when John realised that I been slightly hurt, or rather, offended by his remark. He stepped closer and put a hand on my arm. Someday I intend to do a serious study of why John Watson’s touch is always so much warmer than anyone else’s. “And you did a terrific job of taking care of me, Sherlock. Even though you were in the middle of a moderately interesting case.”

My shoulders straightened a little. No one has ever praised me the way John does. He means it every single time. The case had been fairly interesting, but nevertheless, I stayed at home and made tea. And heated soup.  
“So I thank you for that and for this, too.” He gave me a quick kiss and we both sat down at the table.

“I will make toast, as well, if you would like,” I offered.

That might have been a bridge too far, because his gaze turned suspicious again. He shook his head. “No, thank you.”

We sat in silence, drinking the tea.

Time to set my plan in motion. “We are going out today,” I said off-handedly. “Mycroft has had a car delivered, as we will be leaving London.”

“A case for him? You hate those,” John commented.

He has not quite forgiven my brother for his role in the Unfortunate Circumstances That Are Not Talked About. John is perhaps over-protective of me when it comes to Mycroft. And anyone else, really. I did not reply.

John sighed. “So where are we going? Unless it’s some kind of state secret that I’m not permitted to know.”

The whole point of making the tea [and missing the shower] was to put John into a good mood and it was now slipping away. “We are going to Sussex,” I said quietly. “I am not keeping any case a secret from you. I no longer do that, as I thought you were aware.”

He nodded.

I tried to regain the upper hand. “I have already packed an over-night bag for us both, so we can leave immediately.”

Instead of praising me for my foresight, as I had expected, he got up and went to the sink to rinse the cups.

Clearly, unless I wanted this whole day to go badly wrong, I had to say more. “John?”

“Yes, Sherlock?”

“There is no case. Absolutely no case.”

“Then why the car from Mycroft?” He kept his voice pleasant.  
It was actually my tone that turned sharp. “Strangely enough, he is simply doing me a favor. I was attempting to surprise you with a trip to the country. That is all.”

When John turned to look at me, his face had already morphed from tense to happy. “Really?” He crossed the kitchen in three steps and stood in front of me. “Just a trip to the country? Why didn’t you say?”

I frowned down at him. “Do you not understand the concept of a surprise?”

He gave a brilliant smile and pressed his lips to mine. He tasted of tea and toothpaste and John. “Sorry for doubting you, Sherlock. Let’s go!”

 

*

The drive was actually quite pleasant. John and I have never felt the need to fill the air with pointless conversation, so much of the time was spent in a companionable silence. Occasionally, John would comment on the passing scenery. I related several extremely interesting facts derived from a recent addition to my study of tobacco ash and John listened carefully as he always does.

In what seemed like no time at all the GPS was guiding us along a quiet Sussex road, although I remembered the route perfectly from my previous visit. I was starting to feel a bit stressed and so the voice of the machine was a welcome distraction. It was clear that John was extremely curious about our destination, but at the same time he was wary of spoiling any more surprises. He kept a hand on the back of my neck or my leg for much of the journey, no doubt as an apology for his earlier stroppiness. 

As I had instructed, the gate to the private shaded drive was open and in only moments we were pulling up to the cottage.

“Are we visiting someone?” John asked.

I raised a brow at him. “Have you ever known me to ‘visit’ anyone, John?”

I got out of the car and he followed suit.

Now I was slightly nervous, not a feeling I like experiencing.

John was only looking at me expectantly. Despite my assurances earlier, probably a part of him was still wondering if there was a case involved with this expedition.

I took his hand. “John, I…” Ridiculously, I was at a loss for words.

“Sherlock?”

“This is our cottage,” I finally just said, too quickly.

His brow wrinkled. “What?”

I hoped that this whole idea had not been a mistake on my part. Sometimes even my best intentions can go rather catastrophically badly. [No particular example needs to be brought to mind at the moment.] 

I squeezed his hand. “I have purchased this residence. We can visit whenever we like. And one day---years from now, of course---we can retire here.” I ran out of words and John blinked at me. “If that is…something you would want, of course,” I finished.

An amazed John Watson is a familiar sight to me; a stunned one, less so. “You...bought this place? How?”

“Trust fund,” I muttered.

He contemplated that for a moment. “All right.” He was still looking at me. “You bought a place for us to retire to?”

“Both of our names are on the deed,” I said.

Suddenly, John pulled me into a tight hug. “This really is forever, isn’t it, Sherlock,” he said a rough voice.

“Yes,” I said. I rested my cheek on the top of his head. “It has always been my forever, John.”

After a moment, John released me and stepped back. “Can I see the inside?”

“Yes, of course, but…” I chewed my lower lip for a moment, a childhood habit that recurs on occasion. “First, there is something else I want to show you.”

I took his hand again and we walked around the cottage, into the very large back garden. Still, we kept moving, until I finally stopped and pointed. “There.”

John stared. “Beehives.”

I nodded.

“Your bees,” he whispered.

“Our bees.”

He only smiled at that and shook his head.

I had chosen the perfect day to show John this. Under the warm sun and serene blue of the sky, the flowers nearly glowed. Butterflies danced across the landscape. The bees were about their business, moving from bloom to bloom. The scents of the flowers and of honey from the hives hung heavily in the still air. I watched him take it all in. “Well,” I said at last. “What do you think, John?”

He ducked his head for a moment, taking a deep breath, then looked up and met my eyes. I believe that it might well be possible to drown in a gaze like his. And I would do so gladly. “I think that forever will be too short a time for me to have with you,” he said. “So I don’t want to waste a minute of it.”

There were many things I might have said at that moment. Possibly some things I should have said. But no words came to me. Instead, I simply tangled my fingers in John’s and we walked together back to the cottage, towards the rest of our lives.

Towards our forever.

 

fini

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All things must end, but I still sort of hate that this is done. I loved doing it.
> 
> On 1 December, I will start posting an Advent story, called simply enough ADVENT. I hope you will join me for that.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story comes from a poem by Robert Frost, which reads in part:
> 
> They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between stars---  
> on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer  
> home to scare myself with my own desert places.


End file.
